Merrianne's 2018 Visit to Kenya

Safari!

August 25 – 27
Safari

I was in the first group to fly over to Maasai Mara National Reserve, and area of preserved savannah wilderness in southwestern Kenya. It was a huge relief to leave the heat and humidity of Illeret.

The weather was much cooler and we even had some rain. On our way to the Mara Simba Lodge we saw giraffes, zebras, wildebeests, buffalos and ostriches along with some smaller gazelles named Thompson’s gazelle.

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The animals were much closer to the road so I was able to get some decent pictures.

Sunday was probably the best day, we saw a group of nine elephants including a baby one.

A lot of the dirt roads were muddy from the rains, our drivers were quite expert in going through these.

And through large puddles like this. (Yes, it looks more like a pond)

There’s Pearl in the lead jeep, we had two safari jeeps for our group.

A group of female lions that were walking down the road.

Our group, plus our drivers. Names will come later.

Leaving TBI Turkwel

August 24 Friday

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Had my last breakfast at TBI Turkwel. All packed up and had some time to chat with Immanuel, one of the Kenyan assistants to Professor Nengo about his life growing up in Kenya.

Our last ride in this particular truck, leaving the dry, desert shrub landscape and the surrounding villages.

Back on the charter plane again. The pilot is the young petite woman named Miriam wearing the uniform of a white shirt and blue slacks. I have much admiration for her. She is spunky and very friendly and did I mention she is an excellent pilot?

We were flown across Lake Turkana to TBI Illeret where we were to stay just one night. It felt much warmer at this location and more humid.

The village on this side of the lake had slightly different huts than the other village by TBI Turkwel.

A few people from our group helped to install solar lights in the operating building of this health center.

We were taken to Lake Turkana with the option to swim, but there were goat droppings and cow pies all over the place and near or in the water. The water also looked brown and murky. I did not go swimming in the lake. It is hard to tell from the photo but the grass was very spiky. We did not stay here too long.

More Excavating

August 22 & 23
Last Two Days of Excavating

Wednesday and Thursday we went out to the field to do excavating in the morning then returned to TBI for lunch, rested a bit then tried to match bones in the afternoon.

Digging with a pick, brushing the dirt away and hoping to find a bone of the rhinoceros. Section 3C was the most productive, my section, 2A, had almost nothing, two tiny bone fragments were found during sifting.

I brought this wireless speaker and Professor Nengo played some Kenyan music to help pass the time more pleasantly.

I was able to find three matches on Wednesday afternoon among the bone fragments so I felt a little more productive there.

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Visit to a Larger Village

August 21 Tuesday
The Market Place at Lorengalup

TBI is surrounded by a nomadic group of people who live in huts and are herders and gatherers, they have flocks of goats, sheep and camels. They live in different villages and today we went to a larger village called Lorengalup to visit their marketplace. It took about an hour to get there in the passenger truck.

It was a small market but I liked it much better than the shops at Lodwar, the place felt a little cleaner and the people there were more friendly.

After the market visit we stopped at the Kaikol Village to finish installing the solar lights at the school, and I had a chance to look more closely at one of the huts. It may have been an abandoned one, I was fascinated with how they are made. They are woven from palm tree fronds and are quite cool inside. The framework is made of branches tied together. I was told that the women are the ones that build these huts. And the men? They are the herders and like to take naps under the trees.

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Meals At TBI

What I have been eating…

This entry will highlight what kind of food we have been eating here at TBI. We get breakfast, lunch, and dinner, apologies to Roderick for not taking more pictures of our meals. Breakfast usually consists of toast, a fried bread of some sort, sausage or bacon, and eggs on order. I discovered that asking for an omelette was the best way to enjoy my eggs, the kitchen makes it with red and green bell peppers with a small amount of red onion. Lunch would usually be a green salad with tomatoes, avocado and cucumbers, a lentil dish, a beef stew with potatoes, masa or some kind of flatbread, and watermelon or orange slices for dessert.

Dinner would be goat or beef, roasted or stewed, green beans or a very tasty spinach dish, lentils or mung beans, chick peas with carrots and peas or a cabbage dish. One day we had an oxtail stew which was quite tasty. The food is very good, but I have been eating small portions because of the heat.

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Visit to Lodwar

August 20 Monday

The weather has become hotter and more humid, I am taking 3 showers a day, morning, afternoon and just before bedtime.

We did not work in the field today, we rode on the truck to the nearest largest city called Lodwar, population around 50,000 people. The main industries are basket weaving and tourism. It is the capital of Turkana county. It was a little over an hour’s drive away. Everything around here seems to be about an hour away by vehicle.

Our first stop was the Turkana University College, I do not have any pictures of this place but it is a very small college in the middle of nowhere with one main building and a library that has just a few bookshelves. The librarian tried to show us their cataloging system on an HP computer that did not work.

We were given a short tour of the building and then treated to lunch there. I found a dead fly in my rice and sort of lost my appetite after that. We also saw the dorms for the students, rather cramped and very third world looking. The college has only been open for a year and a half and has many needs, one of the main ones is a good source of water.

After the tour we went to the downtown area to look at…what else, a basket weaving store. A few people in the group purchased some baskets. The rest of the shops did not look very appealing so we left right after looking at the basket shop.

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Installation of Solar Lights in Three Village School Buildings

Because this is a Rotary Club trip there is an element of service and my friend Pearl Cheng, who organized this trip, researched needs for the area that we would be spending more time in, namely the Turkana area, and secured solar lights to install in three different schools.

We did not work in the field today, instead we went to three different locations to meet the people of the villages, present some books, clothing and school supplies and other members in our group installed the solar lights.

At the first location, Nakudet, the villagers had just finished their church service, I met the pastor, and the adults and children came over greeting us with singing and dancing. We met the Chief of the village, who is a woman, and other elders, the teacher, and the chairman. Many speeches were given and the gifts were presented. It was quite something. There were no desks in the first school house, this is a need that they still have.

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There were a lot of children at this village.

Pearl presenting books and other items. The woman directly behind her is the chief. She is actually a government official.

The women in the village wear very colorful clothing.

At the second village, Kaikol, a large group of women greeted the truck with singing and dancing, they seemed even more friendly than the first group, if that was possible.

The children were more engaging, they were not afraid to sit right in our laps inside the schoolroom.

The second schoolroom, although it was smaller, had crude seats and desktops. Again, more speeches from this village and one or two from our group..

We actually went back to this school later to install the solar lights because the first and third school took longer than expected.

Afternoon Work

August 18 Saturday Afternoon

After lunch and a short rest we met at another building on campus to sort through bones and try to match them up, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle, but there is no guide to tell you how to put them together. A few people in group found pieces that went together and they were glued together with gorilla glue. My sister Janet would have enjoyed this since she loves to put together jigsaw puzzles.

The pieces that we found from the excavation site were added to the boxes of bones already uncovered and cleaned.

Matching colors was not always reliable, looking for similar sizes and patterns worked better.

Can you see any matches?
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Excavation Day

August 18 Saturday

Breakfast was at 6:45am then we headed out to the field to do a few hours of excavation. I am getting used to climbing up into the passenger truck and getting down.

The landscape that we drive by is dotted with lots of acacia trees and every now and then the huts of the villagers.
There are also lots of goats running around, and camels.

The site where we were excavating was where the bones of a rhinoceros from the Miocene period was found in 2015. The Miocene period is 13 million years ago.
Excavation work is long and tedious, one group worked in an area just brushing dirt off carefully and scooping the sand and rocks and possibly bones into a pan, this group had to walk around in socks or bare feet. Another group waited with large sieve trays to shake out the sand and search for possible bone fragments. It was cooler weather when we started then the sun came out from the clouds and it was very hot. We stopped work around 12:15pm and went back to TBI for lunch

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