Blogs from Samburu NR, Rift Valley Province, Kenya, Africa

And here it is, the number one all-time trip I have wanted to take, and after much planning and research it was finally going to happen! Africa, a continent that has always held an exotic mystique for me, and specifically the two countries of Kenya and Tanzania we were set to explore: the animals, the Masai, the parks/reserves, Kilimanjaro, Serengeti, Zanzibar, and on and on...so away we go! Being a milestone birthday year for myself I floated the idea of doing some safaris in Kenya/Tanzania and ending with some beach time on Zanzibar to the Lovely K, and while safaris were not big on her list of things to do she suggested we add a Kilimanjaro climb to round out the adventure, perfect! This was to be a mostly guided tour, for some crazy reason they ... read more

We started out on our great safari (trip) at 5AM Saturday. Since the word got out that we were going to Nairobi, we had enough people who wanted to come along that we could filed up about ten vehicles. She had a definite priority list: 1st - sick people and relatives to care for them, 2nd government officials and dispensary staff 3rd church members, 4th other townspeople. As it turned out, Gloria and Cheryl were in the front of the ambulance, Matthew and I were in the back on fold-down metal seats along with six other people and plenty luggage and other cargo. The trip would end up taking about 14 hours and cover only 400 kilometers (250 miles) the roads (if you can call them that) are ruts interrupted by boulders. If you can imagine ... read more

The past two days have been pretty uneventful during the day but the evenings have been fun. Daytime activities for Cheryl have included organizing the boxes in Gloria’s office since they moved her into it without much thought as to what goes where. She did the same with her spare bedroom which had become the dispensary de facto storage area. She also made up nearly two dozen Maternity kits for the new mothers. These kits include all the stuff Americans give to expectant mothers at a baby shower only the items are adjusted for living in rural Kenya. I worked at the office helping the staff with various computer questions and basic instruction in Windows-based applications (e.g. cut & pastes, multiple item selection, inserting photos into Word documents, download & install free utilities to make their ... read more

Considering that we are a hundred miles from the nearest wide spot in the road, I think the technology here is pretty nifty. First, let’s start with the basics - water and sewer. Water comes from mountain springs or wells and is collected in a concrete reservoir just uphill from the dispensary. You might call it the water tower, but it’s not a tower, so you probably shouldn’t. It is then piped down to the home(s) and a spigot in the middle of the truck yard as well as a faucet in the town of Arsim. Water for consumption by Americans needs to be boiled and filtered to not upset our delicate constitutions. Drinking directly from the tap would result in the Kenyan version of Montezuma’s Revenge. By the way, did you know that if Mexicans ... read more

Gloria finally arrived home about 1 AM from her meetings in Baragoi, a town 3 hours away by vehicle. Naturally, we didn’t see her until the morning. It seems that government bureaucracies are no different wherever you go. The Kenyan Ministry of Health has started a push to vaccinate people all over the country against Trachoma, a disease of the eye. I’ll talk more about that later. In their infinite bureaucratic wisdom they decided that all of the healthcare workers throughout the country needed to gather together in the town of Baragoi for two days to learn all about the vaccination procedures pick up their supplies of the medications and, most importantly, get “the stick” to measure youngsters to determine the dosage based on height. Well, you guessed it, a) the agency that is in overall ... read more