Week 7

This week I will begin by quieting a few skeptics. Yes, we do both teach. Grace teaches English grammar to Form 2 (grade 10) students two days a week at the high school division of Moi University, at the main campus, 35 km out of town. She has also started volunteering at Lions school (a private elementary school down the street from us). She says the grade 4 students at Lions are close to on par with her Form 2 students. She has about 65 in her class and there are about 6 textbooks. She gave a test recently and about 7 students passed. I teach an undergraduate class (2 hrs.) on Tuesday, a Masters class on Thursday and a PhD class on Friday. The latter two are 3 hours. I went for my three-hour class on Friday and ended up sitting in on a PhD presentation and several Masters proposals for 6.5 hours instead. A significant portion of every student’s project was on material I have been teaching in my Friday class the last 3 weeks (General Linear Models). Most of the students would have benefited had they been in my class. My Tuesday and Thursday classes end the first week in March and the Department wants me to present some non-credit sessions on developing models after that.

There was a sad note for us this week. My cousin, Henry Giesbrecht, was home recovering from recent hip replacement surgery when a massive blood clot developed causing his sudden and untimely death. He was only 65.

Again, we have had an amazing weekend. Eleven of us went on a two-day excursion to Hell’s Gate National Park. Our American friends and one Swedish student could not come but we added three Canadians from North Bay Ontario. (Besides Grace and me, all the others are students so they suggested it was like we were their parents.)  As with our other trips, the drive was very scenic - and the roads – let’s just say we are in Africa. As you can tell on the first picture, we needed to cross the equator. On Saturday afternoon we went to areas surrounding Lake Navisha. Some of the animals we were rewarded with seeing were flamingos, zebras, giraffes, and water buffalo. For night we went to a place called Fisherman’s Camp where we slept in tents. The tents were exactly two single mattresses wide and about as long, with a bow (non-window) at the end where we could put our suitcase.

Sunday morning we woke up very early and arrived at Hell’s Gate National Park at 6:00 a.m. opening time. Unfortunately, that was 6:00 a.m. African time. The people in charge did not get there until almost 6:30. Early morning is the best time as that is when the animals are grazing. This is one of the few parks where they allow biking or hiking – because lions or cheetahs are rare in this park. All of us, except for Grace, rented bikes for a very enjoyable ride from the gate to a place called Maiben. Grace and our tour guide rode behind us in our van. We were duly rewarded for our early ride. There were many animals close to or even on the road. Many animals were the same but we got closer, and also saw some warthogs. I have many good pictures but can only include a few – ones that provide a good overview.

At Maiben nine of us went on a very enjoyable hike into and along a canyon. (It was too rough and treacherous for Grace and one of the Swedish gals took ill.) There were places we need to pull people up from the top and push them up from the bottom. Going down was easier but also more treacherous. In a few cases some of the gals were shaking with fear, but at that point there was no alternative. In the end, all of us were very glad we had gone on the trek because it was most enjoyable. It reminded me a lot of Petra in Jordan, though it was cooler and on a less grandiose scale.

Week 6

This was a quiet week for us. On Monday morning I texted the organizer of our class field trip to Mombasa to get some details. Having received no reply by shortly after noon, I phoned him only to be told the trip was not certain, as too few students had paid their student fees. In the evening I emailed the professor I co-teach that course with. She was surprised I had heard nothing and proceeded to tell me the trip was postponed to the next semester - so that means canceled for me. Too bad, but other things have gone well.

The picture below shows a typical market one can find in Eldoret and most of the villages we have passed through. In some cases there are concentrated markets, in many places people simply lay their wares down on the sidewalk or at the side of the road and hope people will buy. There are some malls that resemble what we have in North America but for the most part there are many very small, crowded shops. The majority of shops sell cards to top up your phone access.

For the second Wednesday in a row, Grace’s driver forgot her so she had to make some phone calls to get back to Eldoret from the main campus, 35 km out of town. She got home after six and since we were still without electricity from before noon, we went out for supper. When we left the restaurant, some cows entered the street just ahead of us. I said to Grace we should just follow the cows home – and we did. They went into a small gate about 150 feet before our gate.

Before we left for Africa, some of our friends indicated that we would not want to drive after dark. We never doubted them but we have found out just how true it is. Roads are not too wide and they are shared by pedestrians, cyclists, motorcycles, cows, sheep, goats, donkeys, etc. Usually these are dark and you cannot see them until you are almost upon them. Furthermore, there are many substantial speed bumps that you will regret crossing at more than 5 km/hr and frequent potholes - on some roads there are a multitude of potholes. Driving in Kenya (neither of us have ”driven” in Kenya) is truly an experience.

On Sundays we have been attending the AIC (Africa Inland Church) shown below. It is a huge church with services from 8:00 – 9:00 and 9:00 – 10:30 in English and a third service from 10:45 – 12:30 in Kiswahili. We attend the second service, which is quite full with about 4,000 people. We have seen up to a dozen “whites”. There is no time between the first two services and many people walk or take the matatus so that does not present a problem for traffic or “changing” congregations. The singing is only somewhat more animated than ours at Fort Garry but some prayers and some preachers are quite a bit more animated. They sing many of the same hymns and songs we are used to. The choir is also the worship team and usually consists of 20 – 24 members.

Week 5

There was a big change at our house this week – as of Wednesday I am now living with a senior citizen. However, I have found no senior’s discounts in Kenya so I will have to wait a few months to take advantage of it.

We had a marvelous weekend. We now have a travel group of eleven people and we went on a weekend excursion to Lakes Bogoria and Baringo. The drive was very scenic – through the steep Tugen Hills and escarpments which offered many panoramic views of the dramatic Kerio River valley – often dubbed Kenya’s Grand Canyon, although it is not nearly that dramatic. The picture below shows some of us at the Chelbloch Gorge along the Kerio River.

Bogoria is a salt-water lake that is fed by two rivers and at least 200 hot springs. It cannot support fish, crocodiles or hippos. However, the lake is rich in algae, which are fed upon by large flocks of flamingos. We saw many flamingos and a few impala – a medium sized African antelope.

Rivers and hot springs also feed Lake Baringo, with no surface outlet but it is a fresh water lake. We stayed at a place called Roberts Camp. Their cabins and bandos (African huts that were very nicely done inside) were booked so we stayed in tents. Grace and I got the safari tent shown below – the young people all got domed tents. The website for Roberts Camp warned us that we were not supposed to get too friendly with the hippos that graze on the grounds at night. Actually, there were many rules we had to obey. For any movement outside at night we required to be escorted by night guards. Excellent rule. When we returned to our tents after supper there were two huge hippos grazing right in front of our tent. Are they ever huge – I show just the eyes below. The two Danish gals and the three Swedish gals said they did not sleep much because they were so afraid of the hippos, which they heard grunting and grazing nearby much of the night. I think Grace and I were the only ones who did not hear the hippos at night.

After a very enjoyable ride on lake Baringo seeing many birds and a few hippos but no crocodiles, we visited a snake pit and then 8 of our group went to view and climb the escarpment cliffs near Lake Baringo. It was a hard climb but the view at the top was magnificent. The following pictures show the 600’ cliffs with me at the top. We climbed at a location that was not as imposing as the view shown in the picture.

Monday I have a day back at work - a day in which I have no classes – and then on Tuesday I plan to go on a field trip (Feb 14 - 18) with my introductory class to Mombasa. (Life gets tough sometimes, not? ?)  Mombasa is very warm and humid so Grace is just as happy she cannot go. It will give me opportunity to see a significant chunk of Kenya.