The Great Rift Valley

---

Two weeks ago we'd left Mbita for the Rift Valley and what adventure ensued!

We experienced our first true African storm in Kisii, Kenya where we were staying overnight. Cleverly thinking (or so we thought), we'd set up our tents in the early afternoon to air out from the last use. After spending several hours away at the soapstone quarries we returned to an absolute minefield. Everybody's stuff was soaked, tents had been blown halfway across the fields and our mats had been reduced to nothing short of humongous sponges. It was a wet, cold night. On a brighter note, I bought some really nice dark-violet soapstone statuettes! A great proportion of soapstone sold the world-over comes from the Kisii quarries making it a multi-million dollar industry in Kenya. It's pretty fragile though, particularly in thin pieces, so I'm treating mine with absolute care. If they make it through the next four weeks of rigorous bus rides without a crack I'll be impressed.

Our first afternoon in the Maasai Mara was almost everything I'd ever dreamed of. I feel like I looked down from the bus windows and in a split second the landscape changed from rolling hills and boulders to flat plains riddled with thorny acacias. Suddenly the sun felt several degrees more severe and the sky a few shades more blue. Our first glimpses of the Maasai people revealed bright red kanghas and blankets draped over shoulders and held together by brightly beaded belts. The people were herding goats and cattle with knobbed walking sticks and were decorated with layers of necklaces and bangles. Stretched ear-lobes, adorned with large, beaded earrings and bands, hung at jaw-level and men and women alike had shaved heads. They share their land with herds of zebra and wildebeest, which cross the road at any given moment, and feeding giraffe colonies. It was surreal seeing these animals interact freely with gazelles and ostriches, I couldn't stop feeling like they'd been placed there by a safari-curator.

Several game drives later, I had seen all of the animals above many times over and could add lions, cheetahs and elephants (as well as many bird species - a shout out to my Ornithology class) to the list. We were lucky enough to witness a herd of lionesses attempt to take down an Impala and play with their cubs. We watched as a lion cub practiced stalking a Grey Crowned Crane through the tall grass and stopped to take pictures of a lion and lioness napping not 5 feet off the road. Three cheetahs lounged together (also roadside) and there were several families of elephants playfully munching on grass together.

It was all fantastic and we got some amazing pictures, but I didn't really like the overall atmosphere of the reserve. It's a definite tourist attraction and warrants its reputation of being a circus of cars. The mutatus (or taxis) get so cluttered during some peak seasonal times that they're even known to block animal migration channels. Furthermore, I felt bad for sitting idly next to some of the great cats and watching them breathe in our exhaust fumes.

A more authentic feel of the Mara came when we packed up our camp outside of the reserve and moved to an ICIPE field station in Nguruman. In the heart (and heat) of the Rift Valley province, we attended lectures, did some field stops and wrote exams and midterms. Our visit to the Magadi Soda lake was memorable if for anything but the extreme temperatures we endured. I don't know how people can do physical labour in those conditions, it must have been 35 degrees of dry heat and I felt dehydrated just breathing! The soda lakes are alkaline systems where water evaporates very quickly given the climate and leaves behind a bicarbonate ash. In the 20th century a European company decided to exploit the natural resource, exporting it to Mombasa for refinement. The Magadi Soda Factory maintains a small town, fully equipped with a school, hospital and pool, and employs local villagers on 9-month contract. They also built a railway and a tarmac road system to the factory. We didn't get the opportunity to tour the buildings as they didn't have enough safety equipment for all of us, but we did walk around the lakes. The water (or its remains) are weird to look out on, it reminded me of a frozen lake at home. The ash thins much like spring ice would do around the shoreline and gleans in the sunlight.

In Nguruman, Professor David Bird (who teaches Ornithology, no joke) organized night-time safaris for the students. Given that I'm one of his students he let me go twice and it was amazing both times. We took the roof tiles out of the land rover and stood on the seats, taking the opportunity to enjoy a cool, night breeze. Everything was oppressingly quiet, the sound of the landrover engine filled the air. About 9 students would go at a time, all wearing headlamps and grinning exuberantly at eachother in the dark. Nobody would make a sound until one of our lights would catch the glint of eyes in the black surroundings. We mainly stayed on the road but had a couple of excursions off the path. These led us to a herd of giraffe feeding in the night - they're surprisingly graceful and silent runners. You almost think that you're watching them in slow motion, it's breathtaking. We didn't see any lions or big game other than that - however we did spot many ungulates (Impalas, gazelles and topis), some African hares and the "elusive" dik-dik. Even if we hadn't seen any animals at all it was worth taking the hour out of our night just to see the stars. The night sky in Africa is brilliant - every star is visible and I don't recognize any of the constellations that I can see in the North (which basically consists of the North star and the big dipper).

The landrover turned out to be a staple part of our time in Nguruman. David (or D.B. as we came to call him) would take us out nearly every day to go birding. We'd all stand on the seats with our heads out the roof, bumping into eachother over the dusty roads and hurriedly stopping for new bird species. We were all working on a life list as a part of our class, mine turned out to be close to 100 bird species in 2 and a half weeks! As a reward for writing the midterm, D.B. had us all pile into the rover and took us to another soda lake where we saw thousands of flamingoes! They ranged in colour from white to a vivid pink - the coulour courtesy of red algae in shrimp. There were also some spoonbill storks (whose bills look like salad spoons) and massive pelicans. It was a great way to spend an afternoon, the sun beating down and warm breezes passing over carrying a salty scent.

From Nguruman we moved into Elangata Wuas, a region found south-east of Nairobi near the Tanzanian border. We spent our time in a campground just off a small town called Mile 46. We spent a lot of time here catching up on school work and lectures, but the stop was highlighted by a Maasai homestay. In partners or groups of three, we were dropped off at Mile 46 with our day packs and a translator and were guided into traditional Maasai bomas. Walking to the boma took some groups up to an hour and a half and the distance that people have to walk daily was suddenly impressed upon me. Bomas are a small, family set up in rural Kenya. They're characterised by a surrounding thorn fence and several mud/cow dung thatched homes. Ours had cows, donkeys and goats roaming around and guard dogs in case of night-time hyena visits. Typically there's an eldest son or father in charge of the set up. My partner, Véronique, and I were staying with the man in charge - his name was Noah. He had one wife (very progressive in this region), Susan, and four children.

The family lives together in a small house, consisting of a hair-pin entrance to keep out flies and retain heat, a small, 5 foot room where the open fire is used to cook and two adjacent "bedrooms", also about 5 feet wide. It was very clean and cozy with dirt floors and makeshift benches. The two beds were cow hide drawn tightly over a wood frame and were both approximately double sized. That evening Susan made us African tea (heavy on milk and sugar) and a meal of cabbage, garden vegetables and ugali. Ugali is a type of filler made from maize. It's almost doughy and a little grainy - basically tasteless on its own but amazing in the African stews. We brought the family a food kit and clean water in exchange for our stay and also out of precaution for our health. We were discouraged from drinking their milk or coming into too close of contact with their cattle because of the presence of Rift Valley Fever in the region.

While Noah and Susan were really interesting, I preferred spending time with their kids. With kids the language barrier almost doesn't exist - they don't expect questions or answers so long as you'll lift them over your head and spin them around. I learned some patty-cake type songs in Maa (their native language) and played hours of tag. This worked out well as Véronique has less patience for being a human jungle gym and is better at asking pertinent questions than me. At Christmas time my wonderful family helped me put together nearly 60 bags of school supplies which I handed out to all the groups to bring to the kids at their respective bomas. When we pulled out our 5 bags the children were ecstatic, they immediately wanted to colour together and began handing out pencils and pens with their many cousins (who we didn't have enough bags for). I couldn't believe how willing and eager they were to share amongst eachother, it was pretty inspiring. The oldest daughter, Monica, was in grade 7 and spoke a little English. She wants to someday go to school in Canada and gave me her address to send her pictures from our stay.

Our dinner time finished with an invasion of cousins and aunts who wanted to see the visiting "mzungus". My skin was thoroughly inspected, as was my hair and clothing. Kids were checking out my pockets for candy - all they found were a couple of hair elastics but still managed to find a way to play with them. The world is their toy over here, they roll around random tires, bang on water jugs and toss around shiny candy wrappers. We helped some of the older kids with their homework and counted to ten in Swahili and English with the younger ones. Bed time hit at around 8 pm, this was hard for me as a self-proclaimed night owl. Adding to the difficulty of sleep was the small bed shared by 3 of us (myself between Véro and our guide), the heat of the room and the sheer darkness. The huts aren't built with any windows so there is little ventilation and almost no natural light. It was difficult to get used to - you could be in there at any time of the day and swear it was the evening. I fell into a fitful, half-hallucination type sleep, punctuated by random arms being thrown over me and the sound of cockroaches and other bugs crawling over the walls. I later learned that some of my classmates had popped drowsy Gravol before bed - a pretty smart move on their part. I woke up at one point hoping it was 5:30 and time to wake up but my watch read 11:30 pm. Needless to say it was a long night.

Eventually the morning did come and we were awoken by Susan making more African tea. I love the tea here, mostly because it's our only source of a sugary "snack". I consume it at a mass rate, I think I'm up to 7 or 8 cups a day now. I thought I'd be able to wean myself off of caffeine! She served it to us for breakfast with 3 pieces of bread absolutely slathered in butter. This wasn't particularly appetizing but Véro and I choked it down. I reconsidered its nutritional avlue when I found out that my friend, Leah, had been served cookie-butter sandwiches for breakfast - we had a good laugh about that meal when the group reunited. The food I did refuse was the sour porridge as a mid-morning snack. I'd had the opportunity to try it at a school visit in Mbita - it tastes like warm, grainy yogurt. Definitely an acquired taste that I don't feel the need to take up!

Later in the morning I followed Noah and his brother, Steven to the pond where they get their drinking water. We had to take extra buckets as Noah is currently admist constructing a new house with brick and cement but it takes a lot of time and water. He has to bring in the bags of cement and lumber from Mile 46 (an hour's walk) and is actually making the bricks in a kiln from river-bed clay. The water source was only a 15 minute walk away. It was murky and brown, complete with grasses, turtles and an adjacent trough where donkeys and cattle drink. The entire thing was wholly unsanitary, but they really have no other choice. Susan explained that they filter all the water and boil it at least twice - a practice that they are now teaching in schools here. I was surprised as every other person fetching water there was male, we'd been under the impression that getting water was a job strictly reserved for women and children. The 8 gallon jugs of water are incredibly heavy, I was definitely struggling and don't know how kids manage with them or how women balance them on their heads.

Our stay was done at about 11 am with an extremely abrupt goodbye. Véro and I were taken aback when we were sitting in the hut washing dishes and Noah bustled in asking us to "bow our heads so we could pray and leave". I'm not sure if it was a lost-in-translation moment or merely a reflection of their generally unemotional personal conduct but it was a little disconcerting. Other than that moment I'd felt completely welcomed and at home, it may be that I'm just used to prolonged goodbyes with a lot of hugging. I hope that they enjoyed having us there as much as we did the experience! Peter, our guide, assured me that they had, but I'd been getting the impression that he was censoring his translations for our benefit. There were several times where I'd been eyed up and down by the women who would erupt into fits of laughter. When I asked Peter what was up he'd say they were talking about how "I was a student from Canada".

Our group reunited and spent one more night in Elangata Wuas before heading back into Nairobi. I'm currently staying at the ICIPE station that we'd been at back in January (it feels like ages ago) and have internet access until mid-March. What an insane past couple of weeks, it's gone by so fast! The group only has about 3.5 more, everybody is looking forward to some quality beach-time on the coasts of Zanzibar, Malindi and Mombasa.

---