Friday, August 3, 2007
Land of a Thousand Hills
July 26, 2007 – Rwanda
“We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families” by Philip Gourevitch.
If you don’t know about Rwanda, you have to read this book. Even if you do know about Rwanda, you have to read this book.
From 1995 to 1998, the author Philip Gourevitch, a staff writer at The New Yorker, dedicated his life to learning about Rwanda and understanding the events surrounding and including the main genocide in 1994. He conducted countless hours of research and thousands of interviews with Rwandans. The result is an incredibly comprehensive account of the Rwandan genocide: its origins, the major players, and the aftermath.
Throughout our stay in Rwanda, the voices in this book have intermingled with the stories from Emmanuel and Amos (two genocide survivors, and our drivers during our stay here). Without these three threads, I may have seen Rwanda as just another East African country, but the term “just another” always makes me cringe (especially in this case).
In Kigali, you look at the nice roads (a development project initiated by Germany three years ago), the new buildings, shops filled with people going about their daily lives. You think, what? Neighbors were hacking at each other with machetes just thirteen, even fewer, years ago?
But then you drive past a gacaca—a local court—where ten people in pink prison uniforms stand in front of a community jury. Every week, communities hold one gacaca to try convicted genocide perpetrators. The aim is not to give everyone the death sentence or life imprisonment. Many of those who can not be counted as genocide masterminds, but killed nonetheless, are given community repair projects and are integrated back into the society - but was does "integrate" mean? It’s not uncommon to see killers living beside those whose families they killed, which is enough to give anyone the chills.
Sometimes I don’t know what makes me sicker—to know that neighbors killed neighbors or to think about the international response to the genocide.
In fact, I don’t know of few other instances I have been so disgusted by an international response to crisis.
Not only did the French continue to supply arms to Habyarimana’s Hutu Power throughout the genocide in 1994, but after the war, they funded refugee camps that were rebuilding Hutu Power groups who were turning around and starting another genocide across the western border. That no one spoke out against this is more staggering than the genocide itself.
In Philip’s book, he interviews Kagame, the former leader of the RPF (the Rwandan rebel forces) and current Rwandan president. Concerning the perpetrator-filled refugee camps in former Zaire, I can’t agree more with Kagame when he said, “I think we should start accusing these people who actually supported the camps, spent a million dollars per day in these camps, gave support to these groups to rebuild themselves into a force, militarized refugees. When in the end these refugees are caught up in the fighting and they die, I think it has more to do with these people than Rwanda, than Congo, than the Alliance. Why shouldn’t we accuse them? This is the guilt they are trying to fight off. This is something they are trying to deflect.”
When I was in high school, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright came to speak to us. I remember one of her first remarks was regret for failing to respond to the genocide in Rwanda. In fact, she was one of the first western politicians to apologize publicly to the Rwandans. In 1997, she gave a speech to the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa, where she said, “We, the international community, should have been more active in the early stages of the atrocities in Rwanda in 1994, and called them what they were—genocide.”
She was soon followed by President Clinton, who became the first Western head of state to visit Rwanda following the genocide. In fact, Clinton has been very active in supporting Rwanda in the past few years, and we visited one of his primary collaborators: Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health (PIH) project. We visited their hospital near Rwinkwavu which serves 150,000 Rwandans. The hospital was already here when PIH arrived, but it was in shambles and barely churned through ten patients a day. We looked at before/after pictures along the main corridor and found out that they currently process 140-160 patients per day.
PIH’s biggest innovation on health care for the poor is their cohort of one thousand community health workers. These villagers have regular training at the hospital and become paid employees of PIH. They are trained to educate the population about health issues and family planning; to be able to diagnose the major diseases that come up again and again (TB, malaria, HIV, and malnutrition); and to make sure people take all their medications at the right time and in the correct dosages (which is essential to preventing resistance).
Although Paul Farmer is most famous for his work in Haiti, PIH is also operating in three African countries: Lesotho, Malawi, and Rwanda. PIH’s community health workers are an expense that most hospitals claim they can not afford. And yet, here in Rwinkwavu, community health worker intervention helps in early diagnosis and drastically reduces the rate of patients falling ill again after treatment. As pioneers in this field, PIH is doing some cost/benefit analysis to provide a model for other healthcare providers, though their emphasis is really on doing good work than over-analyzing it.
We also had a chance to see the new training center that PIH is building up behind the hospital. Once completed, the training center will have dormitories with fifty-person capacity and classrooms that can welcome many more. The training center will be a site for teaching the community health workers, for training farmers new cultivation practices, and for offering the community the opportunity to attend other nutrition and health courses. This is more evidence of PIH’s amazing holistic approach to poverty alleviation.
We sat down for lunch with Michael, one of PIH’s main physicians, and Margaret, a representative from The Clinton Foundation. It was a short lunch because we had an appointment with the Millennium Village Project (MVP) in the early afternoon. In our limited time, we learned more about a recent project initiated by PIH and Harvard’s Business School to write about the huge deflection of charity funds back into the hands of foreign aid workers. In particular, they are focusing on USAID and the fact that on average, only thirty percent of funds are used for community projects.
As we drove to the MVP office, I saw several wells and pumps along the road, but all seemed to be new and unused. We soon learned that the government has been trying to expand the water distribution network, but that in the last one and a half years MVP has been operating in Rwanda, little progress has been made. It was interesting to hear that MVP itself has not taken an active role in well-building initiatives. At the same time, we visited a farmer who has planted one hundred fruit trees on his farm (with seedlings from MVP), and travels ten kilometers to get enough water to feed his plants. I can’t help but wonder how sustainable this project will be. Still, most of the one hundred trees appeared to be healthy and the farmer is very dedicated to caring for them. He used banana tree shoots to protect the earth around the trees and retain moisture.
MVP Rwanda has forty people on staff. Their first priority is food security and they work with five hundred model farmers to pioneer improved farming practices to increase the productivity of the land. Their second priority is health and they have made huge strides to improve local health care centers. After visiting the farmers, we drove to a nearby health center. Before MVP intervened, the center had just three nurses. Now, the center boasts fourteen nurses and serves a community of 25,000. We walked into ward after ward of patients, beginning in the maternity ward, where we visited a young woman who was pregnant with her fifth child. It was a very safe and clean environment and all her friends were there to keep her company. It was dinner time, and we felt a bit awkward interrupting all the patients as they ate in near silence. We didn't stay long because the sun was setting and our own stomachs were beginning to growl.
* * * * * * *
Rwanda is a land of red earth, red bricks, red homes. Even blue buildings, green buildings, they all have a red stain that creeps up the base of their walls. The dust is carried upwards by wind and by little red hands but never goes higher than two feet.
Red dust creeps up, but red blood drips down. It's strange to me that the only visual cue that reminds me of genocide is a natural one, when genocide is so unnatural.
In some ways, I think my brain is trying to reconcile what I see at genocide memorials with the new Rwanda that surrounds it and erases the traces. But it's hard to erase what we've seen.
A patch of blood on a church wall has baby bloody tendrils that slip down to the cement floor. Perpetrators would throw babies against the church walls claiming that if they didn't, the children might become the next Kagame (leader of the rebel RPF forces). The alter cloth is stained red and a path of bullet holes leads to a Holy Mary who miraculously stands unharmed beneath a bullet-holed roof and grenade-damaged supports. It makes me sick when I think about church leaders telling Tutsis to gather in the church and then deciding to kill them. I honestly don't know how anyone in Rwanda is still religious.
We went below ground, into the mass grave behind one church. Thousands of skulls lined the shelves along a narrow passageway beneath the earth. It felt claustrophobic
and I just wanted to get out.
It's hard to look at such things, but I do think it's important...particularly for younger Rwandans today. We visited the big genocide memorial in Kigali, which was very well done. Currently, the genocide is not taught about in schools, but the genocide memorial staff are helping facilitate discussions on how to start including this important part of Rwandan history in the education of their children to make sure it never happens again.
“We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families” by Philip Gourevitch.
If you don’t know about Rwanda, you have to read this book. Even if you do know about Rwanda, you have to read this book.
From 1995 to 1998, the author Philip Gourevitch, a staff writer at The New Yorker, dedicated his life to learning about Rwanda and understanding the events surrounding and including the main genocide in 1994. He conducted countless hours of research and thousands of interviews with Rwandans. The result is an incredibly comprehensive account of the Rwandan genocide: its origins, the major players, and the aftermath.
Throughout our stay in Rwanda, the voices in this book have intermingled with the stories from Emmanuel and Amos (two genocide survivors, and our drivers during our stay here). Without these three threads, I may have seen Rwanda as just another East African country, but the term “just another” always makes me cringe (especially in this case).
In Kigali, you look at the nice roads (a development project initiated by Germany three years ago), the new buildings, shops filled with people going about their daily lives. You think, what? Neighbors were hacking at each other with machetes just thirteen, even fewer, years ago?
But then you drive past a gacaca—a local court—where ten people in pink prison uniforms stand in front of a community jury. Every week, communities hold one gacaca to try convicted genocide perpetrators. The aim is not to give everyone the death sentence or life imprisonment. Many of those who can not be counted as genocide masterminds, but killed nonetheless, are given community repair projects and are integrated back into the society - but was does "integrate" mean? It’s not uncommon to see killers living beside those whose families they killed, which is enough to give anyone the chills.
Sometimes I don’t know what makes me sicker—to know that neighbors killed neighbors or to think about the international response to the genocide.
In fact, I don’t know of few other instances I have been so disgusted by an international response to crisis.
Not only did the French continue to supply arms to Habyarimana’s Hutu Power throughout the genocide in 1994, but after the war, they funded refugee camps that were rebuilding Hutu Power groups who were turning around and starting another genocide across the western border. That no one spoke out against this is more staggering than the genocide itself.
In Philip’s book, he interviews Kagame, the former leader of the RPF (the Rwandan rebel forces) and current Rwandan president. Concerning the perpetrator-filled refugee camps in former Zaire, I can’t agree more with Kagame when he said, “I think we should start accusing these people who actually supported the camps, spent a million dollars per day in these camps, gave support to these groups to rebuild themselves into a force, militarized refugees. When in the end these refugees are caught up in the fighting and they die, I think it has more to do with these people than Rwanda, than Congo, than the Alliance. Why shouldn’t we accuse them? This is the guilt they are trying to fight off. This is something they are trying to deflect.”
When I was in high school, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright came to speak to us. I remember one of her first remarks was regret for failing to respond to the genocide in Rwanda. In fact, she was one of the first western politicians to apologize publicly to the Rwandans. In 1997, she gave a speech to the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa, where she said, “We, the international community, should have been more active in the early stages of the atrocities in Rwanda in 1994, and called them what they were—genocide.”
She was soon followed by President Clinton, who became the first Western head of state to visit Rwanda following the genocide. In fact, Clinton has been very active in supporting Rwanda in the past few years, and we visited one of his primary collaborators: Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health (PIH) project. We visited their hospital near Rwinkwavu which serves 150,000 Rwandans. The hospital was already here when PIH arrived, but it was in shambles and barely churned through ten patients a day. We looked at before/after pictures along the main corridor and found out that they currently process 140-160 patients per day.
PIH’s biggest innovation on health care for the poor is their cohort of one thousand community health workers. These villagers have regular training at the hospital and become paid employees of PIH. They are trained to educate the population about health issues and family planning; to be able to diagnose the major diseases that come up again and again (TB, malaria, HIV, and malnutrition); and to make sure people take all their medications at the right time and in the correct dosages (which is essential to preventing resistance).
Although Paul Farmer is most famous for his work in Haiti, PIH is also operating in three African countries: Lesotho, Malawi, and Rwanda. PIH’s community health workers are an expense that most hospitals claim they can not afford. And yet, here in Rwinkwavu, community health worker intervention helps in early diagnosis and drastically reduces the rate of patients falling ill again after treatment. As pioneers in this field, PIH is doing some cost/benefit analysis to provide a model for other healthcare providers, though their emphasis is really on doing good work than over-analyzing it.
We also had a chance to see the new training center that PIH is building up behind the hospital. Once completed, the training center will have dormitories with fifty-person capacity and classrooms that can welcome many more. The training center will be a site for teaching the community health workers, for training farmers new cultivation practices, and for offering the community the opportunity to attend other nutrition and health courses. This is more evidence of PIH’s amazing holistic approach to poverty alleviation.
We sat down for lunch with Michael, one of PIH’s main physicians, and Margaret, a representative from The Clinton Foundation. It was a short lunch because we had an appointment with the Millennium Village Project (MVP) in the early afternoon. In our limited time, we learned more about a recent project initiated by PIH and Harvard’s Business School to write about the huge deflection of charity funds back into the hands of foreign aid workers. In particular, they are focusing on USAID and the fact that on average, only thirty percent of funds are used for community projects.
As we drove to the MVP office, I saw several wells and pumps along the road, but all seemed to be new and unused. We soon learned that the government has been trying to expand the water distribution network, but that in the last one and a half years MVP has been operating in Rwanda, little progress has been made. It was interesting to hear that MVP itself has not taken an active role in well-building initiatives. At the same time, we visited a farmer who has planted one hundred fruit trees on his farm (with seedlings from MVP), and travels ten kilometers to get enough water to feed his plants. I can’t help but wonder how sustainable this project will be. Still, most of the one hundred trees appeared to be healthy and the farmer is very dedicated to caring for them. He used banana tree shoots to protect the earth around the trees and retain moisture.
MVP Rwanda has forty people on staff. Their first priority is food security and they work with five hundred model farmers to pioneer improved farming practices to increase the productivity of the land. Their second priority is health and they have made huge strides to improve local health care centers. After visiting the farmers, we drove to a nearby health center. Before MVP intervened, the center had just three nurses. Now, the center boasts fourteen nurses and serves a community of 25,000. We walked into ward after ward of patients, beginning in the maternity ward, where we visited a young woman who was pregnant with her fifth child. It was a very safe and clean environment and all her friends were there to keep her company. It was dinner time, and we felt a bit awkward interrupting all the patients as they ate in near silence. We didn't stay long because the sun was setting and our own stomachs were beginning to growl.
* * * * * * *
Rwanda is a land of red earth, red bricks, red homes. Even blue buildings, green buildings, they all have a red stain that creeps up the base of their walls. The dust is carried upwards by wind and by little red hands but never goes higher than two feet.
Red dust creeps up, but red blood drips down. It's strange to me that the only visual cue that reminds me of genocide is a natural one, when genocide is so unnatural.
In some ways, I think my brain is trying to reconcile what I see at genocide memorials with the new Rwanda that surrounds it and erases the traces. But it's hard to erase what we've seen.
A patch of blood on a church wall has baby bloody tendrils that slip down to the cement floor. Perpetrators would throw babies against the church walls claiming that if they didn't, the children might become the next Kagame (leader of the rebel RPF forces). The alter cloth is stained red and a path of bullet holes leads to a Holy Mary who miraculously stands unharmed beneath a bullet-holed roof and grenade-damaged supports. It makes me sick when I think about church leaders telling Tutsis to gather in the church and then deciding to kill them. I honestly don't know how anyone in Rwanda is still religious.
We went below ground, into the mass grave behind one church. Thousands of skulls lined the shelves along a narrow passageway beneath the earth. It felt claustrophobic
and I just wanted to get out.
It's hard to look at such things, but I do think it's important...particularly for younger Rwandans today. We visited the big genocide memorial in Kigali, which was very well done. Currently, the genocide is not taught about in schools, but the genocide memorial staff are helping facilitate discussions on how to start including this important part of Rwandan history in the education of their children to make sure it never happens again.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Lamu
July 24, 2007 – Kenya
I woke up early, after a night of unsettled sleep and discovered a new row of mosquito bites on my arm. To pass the time, I pulled out my book and read until the boys were up, and then we organized laundry and put together a backpack for the day. Seid and Mohamed made us a magnificent breakfast—a combination of American-style eggs and Swahili-style samosas.
Today, we ventured over to Shela, the main beach near Lamu. Most tourists take a motor boat or a dhow over, but we decided to walk. It was high tide and much of the path was covered in water, but we just hiked up our pants and continued onwards. We walked past Lamu’s power plant—a huge diesel generator surrounded by blackened earth and empty diesel cans that lay strewn about. It was painful to look at.
Farther along the path, we walked past the Ministry of Land Management, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Wildlife. So many ministries…they are all housed in the most lavish buildings on the island, but I’m not too clear on what policies they're implimenting.
We arrived at Shela just as our many layers of conservative clothes were soaked through and through with sweat. My awe at Muslim women and their many veils grew as we walked over. How can they take the heat? At the first restaurant, we stopped for a refreshing lime juice.
On the sandy shores of Shela, we explored what was around the bend…and the next bend…and the next. Shela beach stretches for twelve kilometers around the headland and there’s always another bend to explore. Among other oddities, Alex and I found a huge castle, said to be built by an Italian entrepreneur (with lots of money and interesting taste).
Over lunch, we struck a deal with a man named Abu who set us up with a sunset dhow ride. We set sail in mid afternoon and caught a strong wind out to the other side of the channel. Thick mangroves created a fortress along the shore. When a mangrove tree grows to its full size it begins producing offshoots that simply fall into the ground beside it and start growing into new mangrove trees, until there is an impassable net of mangrove roots and branches.
As we took down the sail and drifted close to the beautiful mangroves, a low “mooooo” drifted over the tops of their branches, reminding us that farmers still live on these isolated islands (despite inadequate water supplies).
A rain cloud moved in and we caught a refreshing drizzle before the sun set in between one cloud and another. On our way back to the Lamu dock, we fetched up an exhausted baby turtle that was floating on the surface to bring to the Shela turtle sanctuary. Turtles are illegal to eat here, but locals can get a small reward for bringing exhausted turtles to the sanctuary.
We had dinner at a restaurant with lights, but when we got back to the apartment, the electricity was out. We used kerosene lamps and L.E.D.s to make our way to bed.
I woke up early, after a night of unsettled sleep and discovered a new row of mosquito bites on my arm. To pass the time, I pulled out my book and read until the boys were up, and then we organized laundry and put together a backpack for the day. Seid and Mohamed made us a magnificent breakfast—a combination of American-style eggs and Swahili-style samosas.
Today, we ventured over to Shela, the main beach near Lamu. Most tourists take a motor boat or a dhow over, but we decided to walk. It was high tide and much of the path was covered in water, but we just hiked up our pants and continued onwards. We walked past Lamu’s power plant—a huge diesel generator surrounded by blackened earth and empty diesel cans that lay strewn about. It was painful to look at.
Farther along the path, we walked past the Ministry of Land Management, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Wildlife. So many ministries…they are all housed in the most lavish buildings on the island, but I’m not too clear on what policies they're implimenting.
We arrived at Shela just as our many layers of conservative clothes were soaked through and through with sweat. My awe at Muslim women and their many veils grew as we walked over. How can they take the heat? At the first restaurant, we stopped for a refreshing lime juice.
On the sandy shores of Shela, we explored what was around the bend…and the next bend…and the next. Shela beach stretches for twelve kilometers around the headland and there’s always another bend to explore. Among other oddities, Alex and I found a huge castle, said to be built by an Italian entrepreneur (with lots of money and interesting taste).
Over lunch, we struck a deal with a man named Abu who set us up with a sunset dhow ride. We set sail in mid afternoon and caught a strong wind out to the other side of the channel. Thick mangroves created a fortress along the shore. When a mangrove tree grows to its full size it begins producing offshoots that simply fall into the ground beside it and start growing into new mangrove trees, until there is an impassable net of mangrove roots and branches.
As we took down the sail and drifted close to the beautiful mangroves, a low “mooooo” drifted over the tops of their branches, reminding us that farmers still live on these isolated islands (despite inadequate water supplies).
A rain cloud moved in and we caught a refreshing drizzle before the sun set in between one cloud and another. On our way back to the Lamu dock, we fetched up an exhausted baby turtle that was floating on the surface to bring to the Shela turtle sanctuary. Turtles are illegal to eat here, but locals can get a small reward for bringing exhausted turtles to the sanctuary.
We had dinner at a restaurant with lights, but when we got back to the apartment, the electricity was out. We used kerosene lamps and L.E.D.s to make our way to bed.
Hajibs, donkeys, and dhows
July 23, 2007 – Kenya
Another morning flight out of Nairobi. Our new destination: Lamu.
As we were planning our trip to Africa, we received an offer to stay in Lamu. Peter Wheeler, one of Charly’s Social-Impact colleagues, owns an apartment in town. And according to Wheeler, “If you want a funky experience, you have to stay here.” So here we are.
Lamu is the main town of Lamu Archipelago, which consists of six islands. Although it was originally inhabited by Bajun tribespeople, the archipelago has been dominated by Arab culture since the early 16th century. Early Arab settlers exported ivory, tortoise shell, mangrove poles, and African slaves to Iraq, Oman, and other Arab settlements on the East African coastline. Lamu was essentially left untouched by foreigners after 1873, when the British abolished the slave trade, and the economy of the island started spiraling downwards. Other remnants of Arab culture are still thickly engrained in Lamu culture…Islam, Arabic dhows (sail boats), intricately carved wooden doors, and Swahili (which is a mix of Arabic and African tongues).
We landed on Manda Island and were promptly whisked away by Peter’s guys: Seid and Mohamed. They grabbed our bags and ran about twenty meters to a dock, where they tossed our luggage into the rear of a motor boat. Everyone who just stepped off the plane was headed in the same direction—to the dock and into the motor boats, which were all pointed towards Lamu.
The smell of fish intermingled with a bit of sewage greeted us as we pulled up to the Lamu dock. A dozen hands pushed and pulled us onto the dock, and our luggage was passed from hand to hand until it reached the main promenade. We rushed to keep up as Seid and Mohamed weaved through the narrow passageways into the depths of Lamu, all the while shouldering our heavy luggage. We turned left, right, left, past a skinny cat nibbling on a heap of trash, past small girls in veils and little boys in smocks and fezzes, past dark corners smelling of bat guano and urine, past tall walls of coral rock. When we reached Peter’s appartment, we were thoroughly disoriented, and Charly, Alex, and I each had a different notion of which way the ocean lay. We stepped into a courtyard filled with lush bushes and tall coconut trees whose leaves reached higher than the apartment walls. Passageways lead to more passageways and we meandered through the apartment discovering beds and bathrooms in small nooks here and there. It looks like a palace straight from Aladin. There are even three turtles in the courtyard.
After lunch, Seid and Mohamed went home and we decided to venture into town. Which way to sea? We almost considered taking Hansel and Gretel’s tactic and laying down pieces of bread to mark our path, except that all the donkeys would surely eat up our trail. Instead, we took as few turns as possible and eventually came to the main promenade. Everyone sitting on doorsteps along the way saw us walk past them five times: left, right, left, right, left. We had to memorize the route. Finding the way gets ten times more difficult in the dark and we didn’t want to “end up hosed” (to quote Charly) when we came back after dark.
Meandering down the main drag, we came upon a large courtyard in front of Lamu Fort. We sat down beside the locals and observed the scene. Everyone was there: orthodox women with only a tiny slit for their eyes to look out, pretty sandals, and henna-ed feet sneaking out beneath their flowing dresses; chickens in baskets waiting to be sold; a drunken old man; two Masai warriors; light skin; dark skin; donkeys; women in colorful dresses; men talking in the shade; girls jumping around with veils that occasionally fell off and had to be fixed; the intermittent white tourist.
We circled back to the seafront as it became dark. The street lights flickered on and then turned off. Oh well. A few generators were humming in the background and some lucky restaurants boasted incandescent light bulbs. We sat in a pub and had a coke by candlelight and then moved next door to Petley’s Inn for dinner. They make magnificent fruit juices and Swahili-style fish cooked in spicy coconut sauce.
With the help of an L.E.D. flashlight, we found our way back to the apartment where Seid and Mohamed left on some lights for us inside.
The voices of children playing in the alleys outside sound like they are here in our courtyard. I keep turning around expecting visitors and finding none. Even the sound of the coconut leaves in the wind is eerie and reminds me of the swish of robed figures sneaking through the night.
Another morning flight out of Nairobi. Our new destination: Lamu.
As we were planning our trip to Africa, we received an offer to stay in Lamu. Peter Wheeler, one of Charly’s Social-Impact colleagues, owns an apartment in town. And according to Wheeler, “If you want a funky experience, you have to stay here.” So here we are.
Lamu is the main town of Lamu Archipelago, which consists of six islands. Although it was originally inhabited by Bajun tribespeople, the archipelago has been dominated by Arab culture since the early 16th century. Early Arab settlers exported ivory, tortoise shell, mangrove poles, and African slaves to Iraq, Oman, and other Arab settlements on the East African coastline. Lamu was essentially left untouched by foreigners after 1873, when the British abolished the slave trade, and the economy of the island started spiraling downwards. Other remnants of Arab culture are still thickly engrained in Lamu culture…Islam, Arabic dhows (sail boats), intricately carved wooden doors, and Swahili (which is a mix of Arabic and African tongues).
We landed on Manda Island and were promptly whisked away by Peter’s guys: Seid and Mohamed. They grabbed our bags and ran about twenty meters to a dock, where they tossed our luggage into the rear of a motor boat. Everyone who just stepped off the plane was headed in the same direction—to the dock and into the motor boats, which were all pointed towards Lamu.
The smell of fish intermingled with a bit of sewage greeted us as we pulled up to the Lamu dock. A dozen hands pushed and pulled us onto the dock, and our luggage was passed from hand to hand until it reached the main promenade. We rushed to keep up as Seid and Mohamed weaved through the narrow passageways into the depths of Lamu, all the while shouldering our heavy luggage. We turned left, right, left, past a skinny cat nibbling on a heap of trash, past small girls in veils and little boys in smocks and fezzes, past dark corners smelling of bat guano and urine, past tall walls of coral rock. When we reached Peter’s appartment, we were thoroughly disoriented, and Charly, Alex, and I each had a different notion of which way the ocean lay. We stepped into a courtyard filled with lush bushes and tall coconut trees whose leaves reached higher than the apartment walls. Passageways lead to more passageways and we meandered through the apartment discovering beds and bathrooms in small nooks here and there. It looks like a palace straight from Aladin. There are even three turtles in the courtyard.
After lunch, Seid and Mohamed went home and we decided to venture into town. Which way to sea? We almost considered taking Hansel and Gretel’s tactic and laying down pieces of bread to mark our path, except that all the donkeys would surely eat up our trail. Instead, we took as few turns as possible and eventually came to the main promenade. Everyone sitting on doorsteps along the way saw us walk past them five times: left, right, left, right, left. We had to memorize the route. Finding the way gets ten times more difficult in the dark and we didn’t want to “end up hosed” (to quote Charly) when we came back after dark.
Meandering down the main drag, we came upon a large courtyard in front of Lamu Fort. We sat down beside the locals and observed the scene. Everyone was there: orthodox women with only a tiny slit for their eyes to look out, pretty sandals, and henna-ed feet sneaking out beneath their flowing dresses; chickens in baskets waiting to be sold; a drunken old man; two Masai warriors; light skin; dark skin; donkeys; women in colorful dresses; men talking in the shade; girls jumping around with veils that occasionally fell off and had to be fixed; the intermittent white tourist.
We circled back to the seafront as it became dark. The street lights flickered on and then turned off. Oh well. A few generators were humming in the background and some lucky restaurants boasted incandescent light bulbs. We sat in a pub and had a coke by candlelight and then moved next door to Petley’s Inn for dinner. They make magnificent fruit juices and Swahili-style fish cooked in spicy coconut sauce.
With the help of an L.E.D. flashlight, we found our way back to the apartment where Seid and Mohamed left on some lights for us inside.
The voices of children playing in the alleys outside sound like they are here in our courtyard. I keep turning around expecting visitors and finding none. Even the sound of the coconut leaves in the wind is eerie and reminds me of the swish of robed figures sneaking through the night.
July 22, 2007 – Kenya
We planned an early morning departure from Il Ngwesi because everyone has told us that the wildlife in Lewa National Park (which is on the way to Lewa airport) is worth a few extra hours. We were sad to leave our favorite lodge so quickly, but were drawn to Lewa by talk of guaranteed rhino sighting. Our bags were already on the way to the car when James announced that a staff member just spotted a cheetah down the road. All the guests hopped in the car with us and our luggage was abandoned back at the lodge. We drove just seven minutes and there he was: lying down on a little hill overlooking the surrounding domain, just 10 meters from the car. We stayed as quiet as is car-ly possible and inched closer and closer until we were just 25 feet from the cat. I was in awe…the cheetah just sat there, stretched, scratched, and lazed about for ten minutes. Then it calmly stood up and surveyed its surroundings. It wasn’t until it heard the sounds of people rearranging and trying to get a better view that it became spooked and ran away.
It was time to leave for Lewa airport, so we came back to the lodge and loaded up the luggage. It’s a two-hour drive to get from Il Ngwesi to Lewa airport and our flight was scheduled from 12:30PM. Just inside Lewa park, we stopped and had a picnic brunch on a rocky shelf overlooking a river valley. As we ate our hard boiled eggs and sipped our juice boxes, a herd of giraffes ran into the valley, followed by a rhino and its baby. We knew it was a ¬white rhino (and not a black rhino) because the baby was leading the mother (black rhino mothers lead their babies), their rear horn was smaller (black rhinos’ horns are the same length), they were quite large (black rhinos are smaller, though more aggressive), and they were eating grass (black rhinos eat a variety of bushes). There must have been a cat in the area which initiated their run for the valley.
Just as we neared the airport, we came upon a whole family of black rhinos: father, mother, and child. The father looked very unsettled about our approach and after contemplating a charge, turned around and began walking away. We passed a few more pumbas and antelope and then we arrived at Lewa airport—a slightly bigger strip of gravel, but still no infrastructure for check-in, metal detecting, or other formalities.
We hopped onto AirKenya…next stop…Nairobi.
Nairobi has become our second home in Africa. We are back again at the Palacina Hotel and already feel like old-timers (perhaps because it’s the only place we’ve been for longer than two days). We enjoyed one last dinner at the Palacina restaurant where we now know the whole menu by heart, and we talked about the influence of rap on today’s youth.
While Charly relaxed, Alex and I used the rest of the evening to catch up on blogging. Even though we’re technically operating in the future (by 11 hours), our blogs are approximately one week in the past…
We planned an early morning departure from Il Ngwesi because everyone has told us that the wildlife in Lewa National Park (which is on the way to Lewa airport) is worth a few extra hours. We were sad to leave our favorite lodge so quickly, but were drawn to Lewa by talk of guaranteed rhino sighting. Our bags were already on the way to the car when James announced that a staff member just spotted a cheetah down the road. All the guests hopped in the car with us and our luggage was abandoned back at the lodge. We drove just seven minutes and there he was: lying down on a little hill overlooking the surrounding domain, just 10 meters from the car. We stayed as quiet as is car-ly possible and inched closer and closer until we were just 25 feet from the cat. I was in awe…the cheetah just sat there, stretched, scratched, and lazed about for ten minutes. Then it calmly stood up and surveyed its surroundings. It wasn’t until it heard the sounds of people rearranging and trying to get a better view that it became spooked and ran away.
It was time to leave for Lewa airport, so we came back to the lodge and loaded up the luggage. It’s a two-hour drive to get from Il Ngwesi to Lewa airport and our flight was scheduled from 12:30PM. Just inside Lewa park, we stopped and had a picnic brunch on a rocky shelf overlooking a river valley. As we ate our hard boiled eggs and sipped our juice boxes, a herd of giraffes ran into the valley, followed by a rhino and its baby. We knew it was a ¬white rhino (and not a black rhino) because the baby was leading the mother (black rhino mothers lead their babies), their rear horn was smaller (black rhinos’ horns are the same length), they were quite large (black rhinos are smaller, though more aggressive), and they were eating grass (black rhinos eat a variety of bushes). There must have been a cat in the area which initiated their run for the valley.
Just as we neared the airport, we came upon a whole family of black rhinos: father, mother, and child. The father looked very unsettled about our approach and after contemplating a charge, turned around and began walking away. We passed a few more pumbas and antelope and then we arrived at Lewa airport—a slightly bigger strip of gravel, but still no infrastructure for check-in, metal detecting, or other formalities.
We hopped onto AirKenya…next stop…Nairobi.
Nairobi has become our second home in Africa. We are back again at the Palacina Hotel and already feel like old-timers (perhaps because it’s the only place we’ve been for longer than two days). We enjoyed one last dinner at the Palacina restaurant where we now know the whole menu by heart, and we talked about the influence of rap on today’s youth.
While Charly relaxed, Alex and I used the rest of the evening to catch up on blogging. Even though we’re technically operating in the future (by 11 hours), our blogs are approximately one week in the past…
Why private wildlife conservation is so much more exciting (than government-run operations)
July 21, 2007 – Kenya
Freedom at last! When James first told us we could go on a morning walk, I thought he was kidding. Hadn’t we just seen wild dogs attacking elephants about fifty meters from our room? After traveling through Lake Manyara Park and the Serengeti in the confines of a car, it almost felt taboo to be allowed to walk outside. Then again, the Masai do it every day.
With one armed ranger at the rear and one Masai warrior at the front, we made our way into the bush. Among our more benign findings, we encountered lavender (used as a natural deodorant), mint, and a toothbrush tree (much better than Colgate). Overhead, we spotted eagles, hawks, and weever nests (which are always on the west side of a tree, in case you ever get lost in Kenya). Closer to ground, we encountered tracks…there were giraffe, buffalo, elephant, dik dik, and cheetah prints.
Every once in a while, we ran into a large pile of dik dik scat. Dik diks are one of the tiniest antelope in Africa and have the tiniest scat. So why do they bother to sweep it together into big piles? As the Masai story goes…there once was a dik dik who was minding his own business enjoying the shade beneath an elephant. Suddenly, a huge elephant paddy lands on him and he is squished flat. After a day, the dik dik recovers and tells his mate, “It’s time for revenge.” Dik diks don’t have too much competitive advantage when it comes to size, but they aren’t stupid. The dik diks decided to push together all of their small scat in one big pile and ended up tripping lots of elephants (and some humans as well!).
After eating breakfast on the banks of a year-round river, we turned back towards the lodge. It was good to exercise and get sweaty. The land around us was heating up and all the animals were taking their midday siestas. Even the water hole next to Il Ngwesi was deserted, but not tempting enough to jump into. We waited until we got up to the clean water of the pool and then jumped in. James told us that in times of draught, even this pool becomes an elephant drinking hole.
In May last year, a hand-reared orphan black rhino named Omni was moved to Il Ngwesi. There are also two white rhinos in the sanctuary, but as a lone male of his species, Omni has become quite aggressive and the Masai are making plans to introduce another black rhino this year. In late afternoon, we climbed up behind the bandas and walked along the rhino sanctuary fence in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a rhino. We did not see any rhinos, but we enjoyed our hike through the valley beneath our banda, and imagined running into the elephants we saw here yesterday evening. Luckily, the elephant family had moved out, and we only encountered an owl, standing silently in a tree beside our tracks.
This evening, we received a beautiful farewell dinner and all the staff sang for us. It was a chorus of sounds that were out of this world…imitations of hyena, zebra, and owl. For the sake of cultural exchange, I also did some hula for them which they thought was hilarious :-)
Tonight, we didn’t roll the bed out into the open. Alex and Charly lay down on the platform and I squished between them with Charly on my left and Alex on my right. We looked up at a foreign sky. There were no dippers, Cassiopeia, or Orion. We couldn’t even claim knowledge of the Southern Cross. Instead, we talked about CPUs, buses, timeclocks per second, and assembly code. Pretty soon the only sounds coming from my left were the “put put put” of a sleeping Charly. It was time for bed.
Freedom at last! When James first told us we could go on a morning walk, I thought he was kidding. Hadn’t we just seen wild dogs attacking elephants about fifty meters from our room? After traveling through Lake Manyara Park and the Serengeti in the confines of a car, it almost felt taboo to be allowed to walk outside. Then again, the Masai do it every day.
With one armed ranger at the rear and one Masai warrior at the front, we made our way into the bush. Among our more benign findings, we encountered lavender (used as a natural deodorant), mint, and a toothbrush tree (much better than Colgate). Overhead, we spotted eagles, hawks, and weever nests (which are always on the west side of a tree, in case you ever get lost in Kenya). Closer to ground, we encountered tracks…there were giraffe, buffalo, elephant, dik dik, and cheetah prints.
Every once in a while, we ran into a large pile of dik dik scat. Dik diks are one of the tiniest antelope in Africa and have the tiniest scat. So why do they bother to sweep it together into big piles? As the Masai story goes…there once was a dik dik who was minding his own business enjoying the shade beneath an elephant. Suddenly, a huge elephant paddy lands on him and he is squished flat. After a day, the dik dik recovers and tells his mate, “It’s time for revenge.” Dik diks don’t have too much competitive advantage when it comes to size, but they aren’t stupid. The dik diks decided to push together all of their small scat in one big pile and ended up tripping lots of elephants (and some humans as well!).
After eating breakfast on the banks of a year-round river, we turned back towards the lodge. It was good to exercise and get sweaty. The land around us was heating up and all the animals were taking their midday siestas. Even the water hole next to Il Ngwesi was deserted, but not tempting enough to jump into. We waited until we got up to the clean water of the pool and then jumped in. James told us that in times of draught, even this pool becomes an elephant drinking hole.
In May last year, a hand-reared orphan black rhino named Omni was moved to Il Ngwesi. There are also two white rhinos in the sanctuary, but as a lone male of his species, Omni has become quite aggressive and the Masai are making plans to introduce another black rhino this year. In late afternoon, we climbed up behind the bandas and walked along the rhino sanctuary fence in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a rhino. We did not see any rhinos, but we enjoyed our hike through the valley beneath our banda, and imagined running into the elephants we saw here yesterday evening. Luckily, the elephant family had moved out, and we only encountered an owl, standing silently in a tree beside our tracks.
This evening, we received a beautiful farewell dinner and all the staff sang for us. It was a chorus of sounds that were out of this world…imitations of hyena, zebra, and owl. For the sake of cultural exchange, I also did some hula for them which they thought was hilarious :-)
Tonight, we didn’t roll the bed out into the open. Alex and Charly lay down on the platform and I squished between them with Charly on my left and Alex on my right. We looked up at a foreign sky. There were no dippers, Cassiopeia, or Orion. We couldn’t even claim knowledge of the Southern Cross. Instead, we talked about CPUs, buses, timeclocks per second, and assembly code. Pretty soon the only sounds coming from my left were the “put put put” of a sleeping Charly. It was time for bed.
Beginning to feel like lodge junkies (and missing Mom’s architectural perspective)
July 20, 2007 – Kenya
We ate a late breakfast in the dining room and looked out onto the sunny plains. In the distance, we could spot Mt. Kenya and its very ragged top, whose highest peak is just shy 5,200 meters.
The birds had already been up for hours, but still had plenty to talk about. Despite all their noisy chatter, it was peaceful, and we realized we were now the lone guests at Ol Lentille. The Americans left early this morning, Giles returned home, and new guests wouldn’t arrive until late afternoon.
Sitting on our patio, we read books and articles and caught up on a bit of journal-writing. A little before lunch, we walked up to the pool. On the way, we heard the humming of wasps and looked down to see a new wasp nest that was forming inside a small nook of the rocky staircase. Even the wildlife is making itself at home in Ol Lentille.
The heat of the day was settling in and the three of us were happy to jump into the icy pool. Thanks to the joint efforts of Alex and Charly, I was unsuccessful at keeping my head dry. Hakuna matata…it was a very refreshing dip.
It was strange being the lone guests at lunch, but the staff told us it is not all that uncommon, as yearly occupancy is usually only about thirty percent, which doesn’t bode too well for profitability…
Beginning to feel like nomads, we packed up our bags after lunch – it was time to move on again. We drove to the “airport” – a narrow strip of gravel in the middle of miles and miles of wilderness. A tiny plane and lots of Masai spectators stood on the runway. The pilot walked up from his resting spot in the bushes. He loaded the bags, and we all hopped in. The plane was just big enough for four people and made me feel that much closer to the elements. And that much closer to hurtling into the bushes when the plane dropped a few feet with turbulence. I think we all tightened our seatbelts a bit :-)
We landed very smoothly on a small, gravel runway. At first, there was not a human in sight. We climbed out and were hit by a wave of sweltering heat. Despite the lack of overhead shade, it was reassuring to have a clear view of the runway in front of us. The wilderness behind us only made me think of hungry lions and large, moody elephants. As the pilot started to pack up, I was glad to see a few armed men in army attire walk towards us. It was a bit strange sitting beside armed camo guys on a runway in the middle of Kenya but at least we felt safe.
Soon, a car rolled up and two Masai men loaded our bags into the back. Our destination was the Il Ngwesi lodge, the first community-run lodge in Kenya. After half an hour in the car, dodging thorny bushes that whipped past, we wondered why our pilot hadn’t landed at the airstrip that lies next to Il Ngwesi. Then, I saw the ten-meter-long airstrip that ends at the foot of a hill. Very few pilots risk landing here.
Il Ngwesi literally means “wildlife people” and marks a shift in the Masai mindset… it was not so long ago that each young Masai man had to kill a lion in order to become an initiated warrior (which had its inevitable toll on the lion population). Now, the Il Ngwesi logo depicts a Masai warrior with his arm resting gently on a lion’s shoulder. The Masai people no longer kill lions except in self defense and at Il Ngwesi, the Masai have created a wildlife sanctuary.
After we placed our bags in our hut, we came to the pool area and talked with James, the lodge manager, about Il Ngwesi’s origins. As one of the few college-educated Masai in his community, James is very well respected. He laughed at his current position – lodge manager – because originally he was the most adamant opponent of having a lodge in his community. It took over 100 meetings and several visits to other lodges in adjacent countries before everyone in the community supported the project.
Il Ngwesi sits on the edge of the Mukogodo Hills and has six separate “bandas” (huts) with a maximum capacity of 16 guests. Each banda has a thatched roof, a semi circular back wall, a large platform/patio, an open-air shower, and a bathroom. Our banda faces a small valley. It feels very open and yet private – on the whole, it’s like being in a tree house.
As the sun started to set, we heard an elephant trumpeting in the valley. In the dimming light, we saw an elephant mother running back and forth with two small elephants trying to keep up. All around them, five or six smaller animals circled in. We were surprised that these smaller animals bore the characteristic black, yellow, and white blotches of wild dogs. Wild dogs are highly threatened and have been nearly driven to extinction by persecution, rabies, and habitat loss. They travel in packs of twelve to twenty and run very long distances—covering hundreds of miles each day. Most well known for eating their prey alive, wild dogs have incredible endurance and chase their prey to exhaustion and then grab bites out of the legs and torsos of the weakened animals. It’s easy to be disgusted by these creatures and their barbaric ways, but then again, everyone needs to eat dinner and it looks like tonight’s menu was baby elephant.
The best feature of our banda is the platform, where you can roll out the bed and sleep under the stars. By the time we came back from dinner, the elephants had quieted down, but other night sounds had taken their place. Frogs, owls, and monkeys filled the night air with song as we fell asleep with only a mosquito net between us and the clear night sky.
We ate a late breakfast in the dining room and looked out onto the sunny plains. In the distance, we could spot Mt. Kenya and its very ragged top, whose highest peak is just shy 5,200 meters.
The birds had already been up for hours, but still had plenty to talk about. Despite all their noisy chatter, it was peaceful, and we realized we were now the lone guests at Ol Lentille. The Americans left early this morning, Giles returned home, and new guests wouldn’t arrive until late afternoon.
Sitting on our patio, we read books and articles and caught up on a bit of journal-writing. A little before lunch, we walked up to the pool. On the way, we heard the humming of wasps and looked down to see a new wasp nest that was forming inside a small nook of the rocky staircase. Even the wildlife is making itself at home in Ol Lentille.
The heat of the day was settling in and the three of us were happy to jump into the icy pool. Thanks to the joint efforts of Alex and Charly, I was unsuccessful at keeping my head dry. Hakuna matata…it was a very refreshing dip.
It was strange being the lone guests at lunch, but the staff told us it is not all that uncommon, as yearly occupancy is usually only about thirty percent, which doesn’t bode too well for profitability…
Beginning to feel like nomads, we packed up our bags after lunch – it was time to move on again. We drove to the “airport” – a narrow strip of gravel in the middle of miles and miles of wilderness. A tiny plane and lots of Masai spectators stood on the runway. The pilot walked up from his resting spot in the bushes. He loaded the bags, and we all hopped in. The plane was just big enough for four people and made me feel that much closer to the elements. And that much closer to hurtling into the bushes when the plane dropped a few feet with turbulence. I think we all tightened our seatbelts a bit :-)
We landed very smoothly on a small, gravel runway. At first, there was not a human in sight. We climbed out and were hit by a wave of sweltering heat. Despite the lack of overhead shade, it was reassuring to have a clear view of the runway in front of us. The wilderness behind us only made me think of hungry lions and large, moody elephants. As the pilot started to pack up, I was glad to see a few armed men in army attire walk towards us. It was a bit strange sitting beside armed camo guys on a runway in the middle of Kenya but at least we felt safe.
Soon, a car rolled up and two Masai men loaded our bags into the back. Our destination was the Il Ngwesi lodge, the first community-run lodge in Kenya. After half an hour in the car, dodging thorny bushes that whipped past, we wondered why our pilot hadn’t landed at the airstrip that lies next to Il Ngwesi. Then, I saw the ten-meter-long airstrip that ends at the foot of a hill. Very few pilots risk landing here.
Il Ngwesi literally means “wildlife people” and marks a shift in the Masai mindset… it was not so long ago that each young Masai man had to kill a lion in order to become an initiated warrior (which had its inevitable toll on the lion population). Now, the Il Ngwesi logo depicts a Masai warrior with his arm resting gently on a lion’s shoulder. The Masai people no longer kill lions except in self defense and at Il Ngwesi, the Masai have created a wildlife sanctuary.
After we placed our bags in our hut, we came to the pool area and talked with James, the lodge manager, about Il Ngwesi’s origins. As one of the few college-educated Masai in his community, James is very well respected. He laughed at his current position – lodge manager – because originally he was the most adamant opponent of having a lodge in his community. It took over 100 meetings and several visits to other lodges in adjacent countries before everyone in the community supported the project.
Il Ngwesi sits on the edge of the Mukogodo Hills and has six separate “bandas” (huts) with a maximum capacity of 16 guests. Each banda has a thatched roof, a semi circular back wall, a large platform/patio, an open-air shower, and a bathroom. Our banda faces a small valley. It feels very open and yet private – on the whole, it’s like being in a tree house.
As the sun started to set, we heard an elephant trumpeting in the valley. In the dimming light, we saw an elephant mother running back and forth with two small elephants trying to keep up. All around them, five or six smaller animals circled in. We were surprised that these smaller animals bore the characteristic black, yellow, and white blotches of wild dogs. Wild dogs are highly threatened and have been nearly driven to extinction by persecution, rabies, and habitat loss. They travel in packs of twelve to twenty and run very long distances—covering hundreds of miles each day. Most well known for eating their prey alive, wild dogs have incredible endurance and chase their prey to exhaustion and then grab bites out of the legs and torsos of the weakened animals. It’s easy to be disgusted by these creatures and their barbaric ways, but then again, everyone needs to eat dinner and it looks like tonight’s menu was baby elephant.
The best feature of our banda is the platform, where you can roll out the bed and sleep under the stars. By the time we came back from dinner, the elephants had quieted down, but other night sounds had taken their place. Frogs, owls, and monkeys filled the night air with song as we fell asleep with only a mosquito net between us and the clear night sky.
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