Kenya Kataclysm

Back in November, I took a little trip to Takaba. That is up in Northeastern Kenya where we have some cool programs running. It was in the rainy season and it was lovely... except the flat tires (that's the hook there, can't beat a little suspense).

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On the road between Malkamari and Takaba:

There wasn’t much to see the second time round

Lightning still broke the wide skies, silent as the sun sank
We past this turn before, she thought
As roads became rivers, melting sand to glass pathways
without wind before but waves behind shifting beneath tires
Red to green muddled eyes climbed muddy trees
A wild grey cat in the shadows motionless watching waves
Rain and thunder joined the lighting and still no wind
Perhaps there is indeed some magic here to see
she thought the second time around


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On Takaba by night:

Seems these days I don’t hear anything
Only silence and bullfrogs singing off the hills
Filled their ponds, their houseboats
Where are they in drought?

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Takaba was cool (work wise) - except then it got hot (security wise) and we had to bolt out the back door to get back to Nairobi: via Moyale. Driving from Takaba to Moyale is only 5 hours usually, but it took us about 10. We braved the mud pits! Then we smartened up and just drove through the brush to avoid the mud pits, the drivers keeping top speed as not to sink... Then the epic of the flats began.

Two at a time - with only one spare (which is half flat, so really only a quarter of what we need)!

What to do? What to do?
(.... interlude under the only shade tree for several hours, talking human resources....)

Ah - Ha! What is coming over the horizon? That's a Matatu (local public transport, see photo below)! And oh what luck, the driver of this truck is a friend of our driver and he lends us his spare tire. And we are off again, with the matatu spare that is too big for our car and rubs at every turn. And our original spare is low on air, but it'll have to do... Ah - Ha! What is that bumping down the road? It is a BIG truck, and a nice one! They have an air compressor and are very nice and fill up our half flat spare... And we are off again...

As we roll into Moyale (a boarder town with Ethiopia that hasn't much to offer) the spare from the matatu gets a leak! But we tax the tires and keep driving, leaking and all, to the hotel and park the car at the police station just as the tire becomes too flat to move.
We have dinner at the Prison Canteen "under da shades" and da stars.

(Just a note, the next day I fly back to Nairobi and having been in the bush eating goat meat for a week, Mario takes me out for Sushi. On the way to the restaurant ... you guessed it! We got a flat tire! 4 and a half flats in 36 hours. That's a pretty good record.)

Back to Moyale, the boarder town with not much to offer, as I mentioned. Moyale by night is not an exciting thing. But we let sleeping goats lie...

This is our hotel in the day time. The hills in the background might be Ethiopia. They might not be. Who knows.

Moyale Intenational Airport, Gate 3, Boarding for Nairobi
The pilot inspects the plane before takeoff and seems to spy a problem.
"Is it gonna fly?"

Not until we get the cows out of the landing gear!

Just kidding! That's not really our plane (and that's not the pilot, it's our watsan engineer). That's a dead plane on the airstrip (no African air strip, dare I say airport, is complete without a dead plane or two, see blog of "Welcome back Congo").
We made it back to Nairobi safe and sound.

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On Kidnapping:

Each time it seems to get closer; hoping it's an illusion
like when the moon is on the horizon and it seems bigger.

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A few months ago I had a blog about “Kenyan Quickie” where I described my rapid adventure in toilet building in the camps that developed when people were displaced due to fighting and violence after the 2007 Kenyan elections.

So… 1 year later. Those political folks in the elections found a “power sharing deal.” There is a report into the violence on the table, with ultimatums of a Kenyan tribunal or the Hague. Personally, I can’t help but be skeptical. Is there real accountability, real responsibility, real closure? I can’t help but feel sad; those who were harmed, stay harmed and they are the ones who want this peace, who want reconciliation, who just want to live the life they have or had, who want their sons and cows and sheep and houses back. There’s a lot of fear and a lot of hope and my biased, skewed and skeptical view won’t really help fix the hurt either way. And neither will all the 378 latrines we built.

And yes, so 1 year later and we are closing our programs in that area (Nakuru) because it is time - the emergency is over, things are getting back to "normal" and the situation is outside our meager mandate. You can only save the world if you're focused, you know. But we built a lot of latrines and showers and water supply systems, some trash bins and distributed a lot of tools, jerry cans, soap, water filters, and other hygiene products and to top it off a lot of hygiene promotion (awareness raising). So what was the impact? Why do we do what we do? Well, we just did a survey to find out – and here is what we found. In areas where we worked people are twice as healthy (or half as many general illnesses); there is 3 times less diarrhea for children! People are 4 times more likely to drink potable water. So that’s nice.

Like I said, you can only save the world if you're focused.

Welcome back Congo

Bienvenue au Congo! Where the time flys better than planes. Where the solution to everything is a laugh, and if you forget that you'll end up in tears. Where everyone suffers - from the suffrance.
Where you can find views uninterrupted by mens hands or feet or cars or houses. Where the forest simply goes on and on and ... is just simply there and green. Where the forest is a jungle.
(The texture on the photo above are trees and trees and trees! The texture on the one below is termite mounds!)

Where termites rule. Spaced approximately 50m apart termite mounds made the plains dimply. (Googlearth Rocks! Which you may already know if you're on Facebook and are my friend. Which I scorned in the beginning, as I scorn Harry Potter, but am now addicted to, although I still scorn Harry Potter.)
Geeky side note: Termite mounds are facinating. The dirt in the mounds makes good bricks because it is fine particles that are well sorted. They say the mounds can often indicate water at some accessible depth (if i had some time and money i'd like to check this out and see if this is true).

Some things never change- like bad but beautiful roads. Like driving on barely a road, horn blasting to warn those up ahead to jump out of the way and you come through a wall of elephant grass to find five ladies blancing on the side, up off the road with fish in a plastic basin on their heads, or men scrambling with their bicyles. Like talking about the crops that are growing as we pass. Like kids swimming in the river in the rain with their mamas washing clothes on this rocks. Like bridges that are barely bridges on the barely roads. Like never getting stuck (at least for very long) despite the barely roads and bridges.
Like the ubiquitous humanitarian bumper sticker.
No arms on board.

No arms. No feet. No noses. No regrets for that matter. No radio (just the VHF for communication, where sometimes you find the BBC). No sense. A little non sense.

A short history of me and the magnificent Democratic Republic of Congo: After Peace Corps in Guinea I got my first job with this NGO in DRC, based between Shabunda and Baraka in the province of South Kivu in (see Flashback post) in 2005, where I worked for a year. At the end of 2005 I went to another region of Congo (because it is soooo huge and has such difficult logistics, no roads, we have 2 missions here) to help them out. That was South, in Katanga province, where I stayed only a month (but where I met Mario). Then I headed off to Mandera in Kenya, where I worked for another year, and again at the end of 2006 I came back to help out again in Baraka and Fizi - back in South Kivu. Somehow in 2007 I never made it here. Then in 2008 I have been here for 2 months doing an interim stint as the Coordinator. Whew. I just can't stay away, I don't know why... it drives me bananas! I don't like the music (Well I do dig JUPITER (see photo below)! I am tired of corruption (but it's getting better). But something here keeps bringing me back.... the jungle, the vrai bush, and the laughter perhaps.