Mzungus in Kenya

I am Alexander and along with my classmate Elias, we are two mzungus in Kenya. Why mzungus? Well that's what we are in Swahili, a couple white guys. This blog has some of our adventures while working with a solar energy company in Kenya.

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Call it an obsession, a hobby, a time filler, an experiment or just something I set out to do and wanted to finish. I finally got the time to try and turn these beans into some coffee. This is attempt number one of what will hopefully be many. As a first experiment I obviously didn't fully know what I was doing, but I went to the hardware store, bought a wooden spoon, heat gun, stainless steel bowl and chicken wire. Total cost.... Maybe 75 bucks. It took a bit longer than I thought to roast them and I stopped at a medium roast. Ground it up and made an espresso. It was great, although for a good latte I need to roast them a bit more. The process - throw the green beans in the bowl, turn heat gun on, stir and heat, wait until they smell great and look like they are the right colour you want, pour them on a cooling surface (chicken wire set up in he picture above) and then grind and make a coffee!

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Organic coffee plantation on Kilimanjaro We went on an awesome tour of an organic coffee plantation and learnt about the entirety of the process from growing, to milling and roasting. All of course done by hand. It was amazing to see and it got us so excited that we got some green beans to bring back home and roast ourselves.

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Kilimanjaro We took two days to reach the base camp and we saw all the different vegetation that the mountain had to offer. We camped with very few people, if any, and the stars were amazing. It was a stress free atmosphere without the hustle and bustle of the rest of our trip, until around 3900 metres when the headaches started to come for me. I upped my water intake to about 10 litres a day and pretty much urinated the entire way up the mountain. We made it to base camp and had 7 hours to regain our strength, hydrate and rest before attempting to summit. At midnight we started our summit. It was windy, cold and dark, but not so dark that the moon couldn't provide us with enough light to hike. It was silent as we started up the steeper sections. At this altitude a funny thing happens, your brain just runs and runs and your thoughts become strangely clear. We shuffled on up at a bit of an aggressive pace, passing every group in front of us. I had no clue if we were actually going too fast, because this was the first we had hiked with other people. Anyways about 2 hours into the climb my head began to swim. We were at 5450 m and about 150m from the first point, the pivotal point that almost guarantees you success at reaching the top. It was here that I looked at our guide Danson and told him "pole pole", slowly, otherwise I was going to vomit. It would have been a hilarious sight to see as I was breathing like I was in labour to fight the nausea. We limped our way to the first point, Gilmans point at 5600. From here it was a rolling hike for two hours to the top. It was pitch dark as we stumbled along the cliff. I was throwing up everyone in a while and nobody had the energy to speak. It was a sheer cliff to our right, but luckily we couldn't see that otherwise I might have fallen off! We made it to the last stretch of the climb and by this point Elias and I are staggering. We can barely move our legs or keep our eyes open. The assistant guide dans tells me to give him one of my poles. I looked at him as if he was mental, "are you kidding me! These are the only things holding me up!" He takes one of my poles and then limped along with one. Danson then grabs my arm and drags me up to the top. It feels like we are running at this point. I close my eyes and just keep lifting my feet. We make it! The nausea starts to fade and the sun starts to come up. My head is pounding, the relief floods into me and it's as if every emotion in my body is coursing through my veins. It was like nothing I have ever experienced. At this point we try and take a few pictures and then decide to head down to help relieve our heads. We made it to the top and the hike down was nothing in comparison.

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Day 3: Up before the sun and into the park. We were on the search for the elusive Rhino, which is more like a mythical beast. The guides all talk to each other with their cell phones and radios and Joe hadn't heard of anyone spotting a rhino yet. And of course we didn't see any rhinos by the end of the drive, but we saw some lions playing and eating as well as some amazing landscapes with the rising sun. It was picturesque with the sun glinting off the golden long grass, it didn’t seem real at all. We also had an incident with an elephant in the morning. The big guy with the broken tusk in the picture got pretty angry with us and just after flaring his ears he charged the van. Everyone yelled for Joe to gun it and he got out of the way in time. The elephant continued on as angry as ever, wagging his trunk around and stomping. It was amazing experience to say the least and despite some minor setbacks it was great. Now it’s back to Nairobi to rest for a night before heading to Tanzania to head up to the roof of Africa.

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This video goes with the photo from the previous post where the lion came up and took a leak on our car. 

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Some more snaps from day two. We saw some lions who looked extremely coupley... Maybe Simba and Nalla! 

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Day Two of the Safari

Food poisoning round 2: Either I am a complete idiot about what I eat or I have the worst luck in the world. I woke up with excruciating stomach pains and thought to myself, “Damnit, what the hell is wrong with me now!”.  Well I had already paid my money for the game drive and I didn’t want to miss out on seeing animals I have never seen in the wild so that morning I sucked it up, popped 4 Imodium and took some anti nausea pills and crossed my fingers that it would hold off. I didn’t want to have to squat behind any bushes in this park!

The roads through the park are twice as bad as those we had been traveling on during our work, but we had a much more suitable vehicle so who knows what they were comparable to. I just remember bucking and rocking and gripping my stomach while trying to spot the next group of lions or elephants. I kept up the Imodium and took some German anti-nausea stuff one of our van mates gave me and fought off whatever it was that was coming my way. I would pop up and shoot some photos whenever possible and felt good about the fact that I wasn’t missing out on anything, at the same time I didn’t feel great. Probably just slightly worse than the American’s that polished off 1.75 ml of Vodka between 4 of them around the bonfire. We saw some amazing sights and animals. The cheetahs were not very active, but amazing to see in the wild and the Mara River, where Planet Earth films the wildebeest crossing was so cool to visit. The entire time we were driving around the park I felt like he was commentating for me. We stopped for lunch and lounged around below what our guide called a sausage tree. It was not far from the cheetahs, but luckily they weren’t into us. Between the game spottings I would hang my head and go in and out of sleep, to get some more strength and fight the nausea. I survived and I was so glad I didn’t stay back at camp, the sights were amazing. More pictures to come!!!

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Our work in Kenya was done; we had finished stitching together the pieces of our report and presented the findings to Azuri and Mibawa. It felt good to wrap it all up and the presentation went well. It had been an intense and eye-opening 4 weeks and now it was time for some safari and mountain climbing.

Friday morning we were picked up at our current hotel by our safari guide and we met our fellow safari goers. Joe was our driver/guide and there were 4 others who would be sharing our van. We hopped in and took off in search of lions and rhinos and all the animals in the lion king. We arrived at the camp 4 6 hours later to drop off our bags and get some water before starting the evenings game drive. I had no clue what to expect out of the whole adventure, but hopefully my pictures can help to show just how vast and expansive the Masai Mara reserve is. Before entering the park you have to fight your way through the most agressive of all the Masai Mara species: The Maasai tribe ladies and their jewlery! You have to lock your windows and bat them away to get through. Right away we spotted the famous wildebeest, which were just finishing their migration from the southern, Tanzanian portion of the park, the Serengeti. They are creepy animals and not the brightest either, maybe just slightly more intelligent than the goats. After some game viewing, we finished our drive as we had to be out before sun down and we returned to our camp for some dinner and a bonfire. Our camp was situated just outside the gates and was a tented camp – a pretty luxurious tented camp with toilets, showers and electricity in each tent. Everyone in the group headed off to their tents to catch some shut eye before the next day’s all day game drive. We would be out between 7 and 4, to see as many animals as possible.

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Visit Original Link

Here is the second one...

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Visit Original Link

Remember when I wrote about a kid named Frank that we met in Bungoma who told us wild stories of being a drug and weapon mule. He told me that he raps in Swahili, he sent me some of his raps, this is one and I'll post the other he sent me as well. I can't understand any of it, but it sounds good. Enjoy,

Alexander

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The Adventures of Khat (Miraa)

Our final journey home it felt like. We were returning to Nairobi and civilization after 3 weeks working in western Kenya and it wasn't going to be an easy journey. We started at 6am with a piki piki ride to the ferry. I thought I wouldn't make it with all my luggage, but managed to hang on and it was quite the core workout. We made it in time for the ferry and started the journey back to the island, it was a nice morning and an enjoyable ride. The next step in the journey was going to be a dirt road matatu ride. To give you an idea of what a matatu is, picture a 7 seater van with up to 15 people in it. We lasted about 10 minutes with people sitting all over our laps until we just paid the driver an extra 200 shillings to only sit 3 to our row instead of 5. It made the hour and a half long journey more bearable as we bumped along we only had to worry about smashing our heads into the roof and not into the people sitting on our laps. We were dropped off in the a little town and needed to get to a town called Kisii to catch a shuttle to Nairobi. We opted out of another matatu and tried for a driver instead. We found a guy who owned a probox and started working on a price with him. We started at 3000 KSH and ended up at 1500 KSH, which was reasonable. As we walked over to the vehicle we realized he was already filling it up with a load of people. They can fit about 10 to 12 in one of these. He walked over and kicked them all out and we got some bad stares from the to-be passengers... It all felt very colonial. On the ride our driver got stopped by the cops and had to pay 500 KSH for some reason or another and I felt really bad because it meant he wouldn't make any money on our journey. We gave him some more money to cover part of the fine.

The next leg of the journey gets interesting. Kisii is a very busy town and we were dropped in the heat of it. Pushing and shoving we made our way to a shuttle and bought all the remaining seats so that we could leave and not have anyone sitting on our laps. Before we took off Elias spotted some weird looking plant that was being sold, he went to inquire and it turned out to be Khat. He bought some at a mzungu price and brought it back to the van. I had heard about the stuff only through a book I had read about Somali pirates who spent all their time and money chewing Khat when they weren't pirating. I wasn't too sure about this. The ladies behind us were giggling at the sight of us with a bag of khat. We decided that T.I.A. and with instruction from the lady behind us, we went about chewing and swallowing this plant. It was a seriously unpleasant experience. The plant was bitter and it sucked all the moisture out of your mouth until you felt like you might choke on your tongue. Just horrible. We later found out that we did it all wrong chewing the stems and swallowing it all. Anyways, once the stuff kicked in it was like I had 3 cups of coffee and I sat alert in my seat staring at all the people and wild life passing by. We were the comedy show for the whole van as we pointed out gazelles, baboons, mountains and maasai farmers. I would point and shout, "Dude look left man! Look at those gazelles! Holy shit this place is wild", In retrospect it was nowhere near wild or amazing. The sunset was pretty spectacular though.

All hopped up on Khat, we got dropped off on the side of the highway in Nairobi in the complete darkness with all our bags. We walked along the highway to many honks and shouts in order to find somewhere that could organize us a taxi. Safely finding a taxi, we made it back to our Nairobi home base, the Mucheru's to find a warm welcome from Janice and Jeff. Jeff insisted on taking us to the bar and we obliged and we sat in the bar slowly coming down from Khat and sinking into our seats. What a day and what an adventure! 

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Mfangano Island is the place to go in Kenya for some R&R. Obviously it wasn't straightforward or easy to get there... it wouldn't be Africa if it was. In the top photo is the first ferry we took. We were dropped off and told it was the ferry that will take us where we need to go; playing dumb tourist we grabbed some tickets and hopped on. We were supposed to meet our guides wife on the ferry, but we didn't see her right away. I was standing in the middle of the ferry deck as I called her and said to her, "I am the only white guy standing up waving his arm around like an idiot". She said okay and said she would find us. Our ferry left and she never found us. After asking the deck hands we found out we were on the wrong ferry in the wrong direction. SHIT. So we took the ferry an hour and a half one way and then an hour and a half straight back. The ferry management gave us a break on the route back and let us ride for free - I wasn't sure if it was for pity reasons or they got such a good laugh at us.  Well because there was not another ferry to Mfangano island we met our guide's wife and hitched a ride on the less tourist friendly boat. In the two photos, second from the top, you can see our captain who shortly after the photo started nipping into some Kenyan vodka straight from the bottle and our destination in front of our supplies and people laden boat. It was a hot 2 hour boat ride, but we arrived in decent condition, if slightly sun burnt, to our destination. On the subject of burns, Kenyans always get a good kick out of our burnt skin and how I go bright red. Some of them had never seen a sun burn before. I guess they haven't gone through the agony or the awkward peeling stage either.  So we arrived at our nice little guesthouse on Mfangano island, which was arranged for us by our network of Indigo distributors (4th picture from the top). The island doesn't claim to have any accomodation aside from a 400USD a night place, but I tried to put these guys on trip advisor. It was a great place for swimming in the lake, relaxing on the beach, bird watching and just getting into the vibe of the island. The island has a bit of a peak to it, so we decided to hike up through the maize fields and bush to see what the view was like. It was a hot hike and pretty steep as we went straight up the cliff face, but was rewarding with a view of lake Victoria and spotting some monkeys. You can barely see them in the picture 7th from the top, but they are hanging out in the tree just above the cliff. 

On our way back down to the village we met a farmer who was harvesting some maize, we asked him the way and he said if we helped him he would show us. We grabbed some maize and he took us down to his hut and invited us in. The next thing obviously was if we wanted some tea and something to eat. After trying to turn it down twice we realized it was fruitless and so we had some tea, beans and rice with the man who owned the house. He told us about his life and we told him about where we came from and he made us promise we would come back and bring our friends with us. After our post hike beans and rice snack we were on our way back to the Mfangano Island Beach Club Resort where we were staying.  The next morning it was an early rise. We said goodbye to our new friends and started our journey back to Nairobi. It was going to be a long day with multiple forms of transportation from motorbike rides (pikipiki), boats, matatus and shuttles. 

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Strictly business in Oyugis. We spent only two days here and traveled far and wide to meet up with customers. In the top photo you can see one of the solar panels on a roof of a customer. Normally they place them on the top pointing straight up to get maximum sun exposure, but others who move their panel around more often just slap it wherever they can reach. We had a few tea breaks on the day and then nature was calling... so I had to visit the bathroom on one of the customers property. In 33 degree heat you can just imagine what these bathrooms turn into. Something like a steam room....  In  the 3rd photo from the top, our guide Benson is giving a sales pitch to some of the ladies in the village. Sometimes our guides use us as sales props with lines like, "Even this mzungu from Canada uses indigo and they make indigo in Canada"... even though it clearly states the thing is made in Malaysia. Whatever it takes to get a sale right! I think these guys rank somewhere among used car salesmen in their ruthless tactics. Left of that, Elias takes a break and hangs out with some of the locals. Bottom two photos: The local ladies showing their wears - fresh fruit, potatoes, yams etc. and a goat desperately trying to get the fresh branches at the top of the bush. There are so many goats always running around down here and they are absolutely hilarious to watch, jumping around and falling over.  They are usually tied by their neck or feet and when they get spooked, which they usually do, they bolt around until the rope grabs. I know it sounds cruel, but if you could see it, you would agree.  Our next stop is Mfangano Island to meet a couple more distributors and get some r&r.

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I thought I would share a video of what our trips out to the field are generally like. This particular day we were in a Toyota Probox (like a short station wagon) and were heading out from Oyugis for an hour on this road. They say in Kenya the bumps are good for digestion and it settles the food in your stomach. After an hour I felt more like my stomach was going to come out all over the car. 

Somehow Elias can sleep on these rides, I think he has sleeping powers. It's pretty funny to see his head slamming around like a rag doll until it smashes the window and he wakes up. 

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These guys love their photos, everytime I have had my camera out I have been asked if I will take their photos. Check out the kid in the background of the top picture, he had to get his lean on to squeeze into the photo of the two guys with their motorbike who insisted on a picture. The guy in the bottom photo was outside of Oyugis, the town we went to after Kisumu and was pretty wasted when we rolled through town at around noon. He is giving his best fist pump in this photo.  

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Kisumu was a serious port town in the colonial days. Oil and various other commodities would be shipped across lake Victoria to the other African nations. It was booming up until the late 70’s when they closed up the shipping facilities and the entire town crashed. There are hints of the old colonial days, one of those being the Nyanza club, which we are staying at. With it’s waspy tennis court, golf course and stylings it screamed colonial era. We got a deal on the place because one of our guides relatives worked here, so we decided to get waspy and enjoy ourselves. With nice TVs, a nice restaurant, a pool etc. it is quite a nice place. This was to be our home base as we visited the surrounding region with our new guide named George. We had heard of George as he was the number one selling agent for indigo amassing sales of twice the next guy in a fifth of the time. As we quickly found out, he was a shrewd business man and has developed himself his own network of distributors working for him and has changed his prices to make the business work.

Photos from the region - From top: Our country club digs with lake view; George and Elias interviewing a customer, Myself and George talking to one of George's agents or soldiers as we started calling them; Some local goods in the Muhoroni district, best known for its massive sugar plant; walking the tracks to visit some customers in the hills, We walked over a bridge right before this shot and there were a bunch of guys bathing in the river who started yelling at us to throw money down to them; These kids love the camera, they all wanted to show off their english on camera, "How are you!" haha.

We took a couple days off after visiting the field here and tested out the golf course. I was as horrible as last time, so I guess it wasn't just that I needed a warm up round. We had some hippos spouting off beside us on the 9th hole which was funny. It made me jump when I first heard him. I made one of the worst decisions of my life on that day, I didn't drink enough water and spent all day under the equator sun. That night I woke up delusional and shivering and had the worst heatstroke I could ever imagine. 

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Corruption stop. So we are in Kisumu now and on our way into the field we almost always pass a road block or 2. This is not just in Kisumu, but all over Kenya. Basically the cops set up shop on the road, put up some signs that might say "accident", "slow down" or "vehicle inspection" and they lay down some spike strips. We don't get pulled over too often because they wave us on once they see the mzungus in the back. We were stopped once and the guy tried to convince us that we had to give the police an indigo solar lamp because they could test the product and promote it. Total bullshit. George, our guide at the time was squirming in his seat when the police man was trying to push the idea of giving them some of the solar lamps. Crazy stuff. Anyways, he waved us on eventually after a sick maniacal laugh. The cops usually take 100 Shillings or more off every car that passes and sometimes they will take a lot more if its dark out or you have precious cargo.