The best day of the trip was the day I thought I had lost my eyesight. My eye doctor (and my mother) will be happy to know I've been reminded of the value of sunglasses. I was nearly blinded by the beauty of it all. (Or it was all that squinting through the glare off the water for eight hours at zero latitude, which my left eye eventually had enough of.)
Mfangano Island is west of Rusinga, and it's a larger and considerably more lush piece of land. As we approached in the small fishing boat we rode on for the day, Dan Nyangweso gave us a short geography lesson. The people of Mfangano, by ancestry the Suba tribe from Uganda who, over the years, has mixed with the Kenyan Luo tribe, have done a remarkable job at preservation. Subsistence farming and fishing were about it as far as industry, similar to Rusinga, but the number of trees covering the hillside set the island apart. That allows Mfangano to be a more attractive destination for tourists, though, outside of an airstrip and one small resort with float planes, as well as boat trips over from Rusinga, it seems like access is still limited.
The fishing villages suffer the same sketchy reputation as those on Rusinga (namely, fisherman are transient and tend to bring problems like alcoholism and prostitution, as well as living conditions of corrugated tin dwellings and environmental problems that result come from washing and bathing in the lake). However, slightly different weather patterns help prevent drought on the island, and sustainable farming practices have prevented erosion or clear-cutting. The hilly geography of the island may help as well, most hillsides are extremely steep and the best transportation is motoring around over the lake rather than walking or driving through.
Fishing boats on a Mfangano beach.
An African named (really) John Kennedy, with the company of Dan and Ochieng, got us there. We met Kennedy at a beach on the west end of Rusinga, and as the real fishermen were coming in from the night's work the five of us were heading out. Since fishing occurs overnight in Lake Victoria, we had the waters nearly to ourselves.
John Kennedy and Timm. There's actually a good explanation for his name. Next post though.
Kennedy's boat had a little outboard motor, connected to the gas tank by a small hose that seemed to fail regularly at moving the gas to where it needed to be. After the engine stalled out for the third time in the first 20 minutes of the trip, Dan, absolutely deadpan with a little smile, says, "We may have a problem with transport." But Kennedy and Ochieng made sure we never had to paddle or swim, and after maybe an hour we were at the beach. The slow ride was fine, as Dan had time to give us a history lesson and point out the sights as we sailed along the island's shore.
Pretty smart muzungu, bringing his sunglasses and all.
We ended up in a small fishing village, where the women were drying the morning's omena catch. We walked through the row of tin shanties and, on the other end, hit a trailhead not that different from what you'd see at an American state park. The hike was advertised as a 90-minute loop to the summit, and looked like a signed and well-worn path to an ancient rock art site as well.
Looking back on the "trail."
The trail isn't worn from traffic of American hikers like us, however. It's much more likely the transportation network everyone is using. As such, the trail winds through people's yards, crosses the fences they've built to contain livestock, and crosses other trails pretty consistently. Even after stopping to ask several residents if we were headed the right way, we got sidetracked and found ourselves at the top of a long draw.
Luckily, Kennedy had fallen behind. The other four of us were pretty high up a face when we realized it was the wrong side of the little canyon we were trying to get up, so we yelled back down. Two women tending the steepest hillside garden plot you've ever seen, on the facing hillside, talked us down and to another trail. We took that route up a skinny dirt path through her nearly vertical maize farm (past a little dog who's job it was to scare monkeys away!) and met Kennedy. He had the sense to find the ranger who would let us into the rock art site, and who knew the way.
Dan looking at the signs at entrance to the Kwitone rock art site. Timm and I paid to go through the small fence and see it, but somehow Dan talked the ranger into letting the Africans ride for free that day.
Kennedy looks at the rock wall where the markings could be seen. This site was traditionally used by village elders for meetings and ceremonies that included animal sacrifice, we were told. Modern village leaders still use the site for meeting on occasion, and the ranger's full-time job seemed to be to protect the site.
The Kwitone rock art looks like graffiti, but it's actually extremely rare, thousands of years old, and culturally significant because so much African rock art has been defaced or lost. You can see the sun image in these examples, which obviously had significance to an agrarian society.
We scrambled up a rocky path just past the rock art site, found the summit of the mountain and could see in every direction. There were a few other historical sites, such as the clearing where women meet to grind grain, and then took a trail that was more meandering (and much easier to follow) back down to the beach.
We hopped back in the boat and motored for another 30 minutes to the eastern side of the island (as my head started to throb and I realized I didn't put my sunglasses in my pocket). We stopped at a dock and had our day's ugali at a small community museum that had more history of rock art and a small collection of ancient Suba tools and instruments. After lunch we set off again, beached quickly at Mfangano's main village for gas, then headed to Takawiri Beach.
The approach to Takawiri Beach.
There's two reactions I had to Takawiri Beach: First, you're flummoxed to have this pristine, clean, 100-yard stretch of the only white sand beach in the area all to yourself. It was the prettiest place we had landed on the lake, would have been flooded had it been Hawaii or another "destination," but the beach was completely empty on a perfect afternoon for a swim. The second reaction is to be confused (and maybe eventually, disappointed) to see a shuttered resort just back from the beach, still in working condition but unable to take advantage of the potential for tourism that would undoubtedly benefit the region. (And benefit tourists lucky enough to stay at a place so remote, peaceful and beautiful.)
The shuttered resort. See how nicely kept the grounds are. It was odd, almost like a ghost town.
We swam in the lake, sat on the beach, walked around the six empty (but surprisingly well-kept) cabins and pagodas, and then met the caretaker. He said we could have all the coconuts we wanted — as long as we picked them ourselves. After watching us (all of us, not just the clueless muzungus) struggle with a strategy to actually climb the trees, the caretaker brought a ladder and long stick to us. Wiseguy.
Somebody's been to Takawiri Beach...
The last stop on the boat tour cycle was Birds Island. This small island just south of Rusinga is a protected habitat, though Dan told us there's some need for better protection by government or wildlife groups — someone recently tried to squat on the island, and we could see a field of maize someone was obviously cultivating. The name of the island, of course, tells you what's being protected. Lake Victoria is one of the most diverse areas in the world for species of birds, and Birds Island seemed to have most of them. I'm not ornithologist, so I can't cite names for you. But there were trees and rocks turned white with bird poop, if that helps with the mental picture of how many birds are circling. I was squinting pretty heavily by this point and could really only open one eye. (And I was getting a little scared, actually. I'm not an opthamologist either, and I doubted anyone on Rusinga was.)
But what I could see was fairly stunning. Here's a few photos for you bird-watchers. Keep in mind I was shooting a little, well, blind at this point:
That day was our most "touristy," outside the safari excursion at the end of the trip. I've emailed with Dan Nyangweso since returning, and he told me he's now part of a small task force planning strategies to better take advantage of the region's attractions like Mfangano, Takawiri and Birds Island. To me this seems a bit like our interest in organic fruit, which I mentioned a few posts back. That is, as Americans we're often seeking the way things used to be, and in tourism that means finding preserved spaces or the rare place that isn't commercialized or full of other visitors. But Dan, like Vitalis and his comment about how GMO crops would be widely welcomed in Kenya, would love to grapple with the headaches of a tourism industry. I'd hate to see a McDonald's there, but I'd also hate to see such a special place stagnate without being shown to the outside world.
When you go to visit Rusinga, make sure this type of a trip is part of your itinerary. You'll see a variety of landscapes, meet people outside the villages, learn some history, feel the sun and wind over Lake Victoria, and be stunned by a postcard-perfect beach and pristine island wildlife. Just don't forget your sunglasses, or you'll be wearing them the next few days to readjust your vision.
Here's a little video with some sights and sounds. The girls singing are a group that meets at Sabina's home every weekend. It's an extension of the women's group, in a way, and this girls club teaches health education and empowerment to girls ages 5 or so to teenagers. The full title of the song they are singing is "I've walked around the world, but haven't found anyone like Jesus." Also in the video are students at KMSS, fishermen at Literi Beach, the Kamasengre women's group, some scenics from around Rusinga and in Lake Victoria, and a few comments on what a few people from Rusinga Island think of their home.
I've painted a fairly rosy picture of Rusinga Island and Kenya in sharing these wonderful memories. But if you follow the news these days or just understand the third world, you know the warm stories and lovely photos aren't a completely true representation of the country.
We enjoyed friendly welcomes, saw beautiful smiles on children and experienced the postcard-perfect safari plain, but couldn't ignore shanties along the highway and trash strewn about, or avoid hearing stories of HIV orphans and the aftermath of recent political violence, or close our eyes to some real poverty and suffering in the fishing camps or other slums we walked through.
This post isn't to wax about the paradox. We met several people actively doing something about their country's struggles, and I prefer to share those stories. You need to know them to know about modern Kenya, and perhaps learn about how to help, yourself.
Marren Ojode, me, and Vitalis Ojode, at their home in Runda.
Marren Ojode is Theodora's sister, and a retired teacher in Nairobi. When we arrived in Kenya we stayed at the home of Marren and her husband, Vitalis. They were not there at the time, because they were in the United States. They were visiting family, and Marren had participated in a conference in New York City.
About 23 years ago Marren was a founding member of the Sanja Women's Group, a community organization that was formed to help women socially and economically, particularly in rural areas near Lake Victoria, where Rusinga Island is found. At the time water-born disease was a major threat, so one of the first initiatives was a series of clean water projects.
Sanja Women's Group was accepted by the government's Ministry and Culture and Social Services, and today women's groups exist throughout the country through a similar government office, including 16 near Lake Victoria. They are not funded by the government, though they do receive assistance through training workshops and grant possibilities. Two men are allowed to join each group as advisors.
Women are at several disadvantages in African culture, a male-dominated society in many ways. With the HIV epidemic, women are often widowed without an education or job skills to fall back upon. They are less likely to be educated because girls drop out of school if they become pregnant. Because of the demands of running households, particularly in rural areas, women are less likely to have job skills that translate outside of the home. If a husband dies or leaves, the woman is left with few resources, and in a economy as insular as that of Rusinga Island, options are very limited.
The women's groups have been a positive force in changing that paradigm. Through health and HIV education, economic training and cooperative businesses organized by groups, clean water projects and simply connecting women in a organizational structure, they promote healthier and more independent women, which in turn produces a more stable and successful community. Marren remains involved in the effort that has spread across Kenya, and the conference in New York was to further training she would bring back to her home country.
The Carlton Peterson Women's Group, Kaswango.
On Rusinga Island we met with two women's groups. The first, Carlton Peterson Women's Group, was a younger organization that, to be honest, was struggling to get projects off the ground. The Peterson Group, named in honor of a late Covenant minister from Minnesota and friend of my father's who spent time working with the people of Rusinga Island, is located in the neighborhood of Kaswango.
The district is located on a hill that overlooks Kamasengre, where we stayed. At the higher elevation the women struggle to adequately irrigate their crops. The sukuma wiki in their shamba was smaller than crops we saw around the island, inhibiting the group's ability to harvest and sell to share profits between members. Without a pump system to bring water up the hill, farm manager Joyce Awuor told us, the labor required to keep the farm going, particularly during drought years, is an incredible obstacle to success on a large enough scale to affect the dozen women in the group.
Timm helps the Peterson Women's Group with the nightly irrigation.
The Peterson group also opened a nursery school in recent years, where children are taught by a young woman named Pamela Odhiambo. She has a warm smile and youthful energy, but very little formal teaching education and fewer resources. Pamela's school was a square hut with low ceilings, small windows and an open room divided in two, perhaps 10 feet by 10 feet on either side. She had an alphabet cut from cardboard so children could arrange letters, an easel, and some pads of paper. As we spoke she jotted down a list of items that would help; things we wouldn't imagine even starting a kindergarten class without — paper, pens, books or balls — remain on Pamela's long-range wish list.
But the Peterson group was fortunate to have land, leased at no charge by the male advisor, and supplies for a nascent business in making and selling hand soap door to door. They also offer health classes for girls, and help in fencing what are called "kitchen gardens," so families can grow vegetables for themselves that will not be eaten by stray goats. Last, and perhaps most encouraging, was the average age of the Peterson group's members. Several appeared to be in their twenties or perhaps early thirties, and involvement from the younger generation must be a sign that growth is possible, if not inevitable with the energy and desire we heard.
The second group we met was the Kamasengre West Women's Group, a more established organization with an older membership. The Kamasengre group has more than 20 members, who sell vegetables from their garden and have raised trees to be sold and planted around Rusinga over several years. With a shamba located on the shore of Lake Victoria, and thanks to some help in building a pump and fence from the nonprofit Soul Source Foundation and our friends Matt Peterson, Luke Bruckner and Peter Morris, the Kamasengre women have made their shamba a model of a good farm. In addition, those three and Gayle Hammer, another friend of ours who spent three months on Rusinga, helped the women craft a business plan that has taught them bookkeeping, investment planning and farm management.
Lunch with the women of Kamasengre West.
Our host on Rusinga Island, Sabina Otiendo, is a leader in the group. She explains more about the members and mission in the video below (and keep watching, there's a song at the end).
The story of these women's groups is encouraging, but also far from complete. As I wrote before, the Kamasengre group benefited greatly in the past year from the help of four Americans, though unfortunately that hands-on guidance is rare. Soul Source Foundation, which is the non-profit that Operation My People also operates through, has the mission of making that help, either in person or financially from abroad, more common. To read more about that organization's mission and background, visit its website.
I think there's a Paul Simon song about photos like this.
Considering it leads to a jewel in a country in need of tourism bucks from the outside, the road to Maasai Mara National Park leaves a lot to be desired. When a driver chooses the dirt road to the side of the paved highway rather than the prescribed lane, you realize there's going to be a little extra time to "enjoy" the ride.
It's not a bad view to waste those extras hours on, driving past Maasai tribesmen still herding goats and wearing red cloth blankets as they must have done centuries ago, and watching the wide savanna open up as you head south toward Tanzania. And a bumpy six hours after leaving Nairobi — with just two stops our driver "offered" us to "stretch our legs" at roadside curio shops as we entered tourist territory — we were on the doorstep of the park.
At sunset that evening we watch the wildebeest migration, labeled in Kenya as the "eight wonder of the world." (Though Wikipedia says a few dozen other things lay claim to the title as well.) And, remarkably for a small tree stand in the middle of a vast plain, we had cell phone reception. (Which I consider the ninth wonder of the world, since I can't get reliable reception in my own home.)
The guy who lined up the safari asked if we were ok with "a tent." Um, I guess we were all right with roughing it for a few days. Here's Timm before the table filled up with breakfast.
Among the other wonders were a shower and flush toilet in the "tent" we had reserved, the safari driver's uncanny knack in finding exactly the animal we were looking for, the three course meals served several hours from civilization at Ilkeliani camp, and of course, the wildlife. It's like The Lion King in person.
The two moments from our safari that stand out in my memory aren't really captured in the photos below. As we drove into the park that first evening there were a few thousand wildebeests ("gnus" in Swahili, or "government cows" in the words of our driver Joseph), making their way on the annual famed migration from the Serengeti to feed on the grasslands of Maasai Mara before returning to Tanzania. Joseph wasn't far off with his joke; with the grunting and standing around grazing it was like a really large head of especially hairy cattle in Kansas.
But as we peaked over a small hill the view opened up to what must have been a hundred thousand gnus, just thick in every direction. There's six million of them or so migrating together (hence the "wonder" myth), so who knows how many we really saw. It was a brown ocean, slowly moving ahead.
After we'd driven around following wildebeests and happening upon giraffes, zebras and antelope for a few hours, we were headed back. We turned on a trail near a stream and Timm yells "hippo!" Joe slammed the brakes, and the startled hippo, which are huge in person, reared up nearly completely out of the water, turned and darted the other way into the water. The whole thing lasted seconds.
The protected gnus move a lot more casually when the ubiquitous safari rigs drive by them, so the hippo encounter got our hearts pounding. The animals in the photos below are moving slowly, fortunately for the amateur photographers, but they are still pretty amazing.
The wildebeest clean-up crew. We timed the safari just right, running into such a large herd on our first trip into the park. A day later they had already moved on, leaving maybe a few hundred stragglers.
Giraffe takes a little bite. A few minutes later another joined him.
Acacia tree and a lingering gnu.
This was as close as we came to the classic television image of the migration. They really do just line up by the thousands at rivers and streams, and someone says "go" and it turns into this living, pulsing (and grunting) flow of beast.
As Joseph would say it, "zeb-rahs."
The safari traffic was inconsistent, but would usually flock when a pack of lions or something rare like a rhino was spotted. We found lions with these two, and were lucky to have such a sparse crowd.
Vultures in an acacia tree. They are really ugly, but the vultures kind of fascinated me
Caught this girl just waking up, with her den of 14.
Then she went hunting while the others slept. She had a gazelle in her sights (its right behind the bush), but made a loud move and blew it.
From our van, Timm looks out over the horizon as the sun sets.
Black rhino. This was the one animal I thought could do some permanent damage if he felt like we deserved it.
Hippos hanging out just under the water on a warm evening. They were pretty shy, but it seemed like they were multiplying under there by the way eyes kept popping up.
Sun roof! (This was the one place in the park our driver let us get out and walk around. There's probably no rule one way or the other, but it felt kind of cool to be walking where the hippos could come get us.)
Another nap we broke up. The lions give you this annoyed look that says, "Are you a wildebeest I can eat? No?", then roll over and go back to sleep.
Silhouette, huh?
Cape buffalo. I think these are in what's called "the Big Five," along with rhinos, elephants, lions, leopards and giraffe, though I have no idea why. They don't seem cool, or particularly rare. I'd put hippo in the club instead.
A family of elephants. This was our last quest, we spent the whole last morning looking for elephants and finally found this group of three.
And then we found this guy all alone. He must have wanted company, because he got pretty close.
One of the first to-dos Timm and I had when we landed in Nairobi was to buy a cell phone. Our friends Matt Peterson and Luke Bruckner, who've made this trip before, had recommended we carry one with a Kenyan number.
That became brilliant advice when we were dropped off at a different place than Walgio expected in Kisumu town. I'm not sure we would have tracked him down before dark by simply asking around at the shanties next to the bus terminal. ("You know, black guy in his 60s, drives a blue car? Have you seen him?")
The line at the downtown Safaricom store was out the door when we arrived, which seemed a little odd for a ho-hum Tuesday morning. But apparently that's the norm, even though there are Safaricoms everywhere. Absolutely everyone has a cell phone, and between upgrading (Internet-equipped phones seemed to be the new thing at Safaricom) and adding airtime (everyone also seems on the pay-as-you-go plan) the cell phone stores are as busy as the matatu roundabout during rush hour.
I got more text messages over four days in Kenya than I do in a month here.
And people seemed to be using those cell phones constantly. This is just me speculating on culture differences (really, an incredible unwise thing to do based on 12 days in a country, I know), but my theory is that Kenyan cell phone etiquette differs from ours because of the lack of home telephones over the years. In particular in rural areas, the sudden access to one another when mobile phones became common must have been an incredible change from the days where someone would have to track down a public phone to make calls. They aren't burdened by the memory of telemarketers calling and being ignored during dinner, for instance. Which made every call, it seemed, vital to answer.
You know that American guilt we share when a cell rings during a meeting, or the polite way movie theaters demand we turn our phones off, or how we'll automatically hit "ignore call' when we're having a face-to-face conversation? None of that exists there. I saw one person screen a call. One, and he called back 40 second later. Phone rings in the middle of our conversation? It's answered. During a meal? Answered. During church? God goes on hold.
As a result Kenyans are very much in touch. Again, I'm speculating, but that characteristic seemed to cross over to national conversation. When we finally found a newspaper, what impressed me was that people from different walks of life, over the course of a few days, had talked to us about the exact issues on the front page. The agenda of the day, even though newspapers don't circulate everywhere, seemed to get around to everyone pretty seamlessly.
This is an awful transition, but that Kenyan curiosity I'm still speculating on seemed to apply also to people's interaction with us. Or at least we were asked a lot of interesting questions, and hopefully we did an adequate job of representing our country with the answers. Like these:
Do we know Shakira, Will Smith or Beyonce? You have two guesses as to who asked this, and the first doesn't count. The teenagers at Kamasengre are familiar with Western pop music, apparently. We explained the geography of the West Coast from Alaska to Los Angeles is as way of excuse for not being able to personally greet Jay Z for them, but the follow up question from one of the girls was the one that got me: Aren't you a journalist? Why don't you just go interview them?
Have the Twin Towers been rebuilt? It was hard to tell how much news from the U.S. is circulated in East Africa. The Kenyan papers didn't have much and the British or international news didn't give us much play either. (Other than Obama, of course, you may have heard he's popular there. Do you own birth certificate joke here.) But they knew about 9/11, obviously.
What does a beard or mustache mean? This was my favorite question. Since Timm doesn't travel with a razor and other Americans had showed up in the past with beards or at least some of that traveler's scruff, they were curious about what statement a little chin hair means. In Kenya, it's one of two things: you're a Muslim or a village elder. For us, we told them, you're either a hockey player during the Stanley Cup playoffs, you're lazy, or just a guy who likes a beard. In America a mustache, Timm told them, means you're a cop.
What is Yellowstone like? For a country so beautiful and full of animals and national parks, that was a really interesting question. It's like many places in Kenya, in a way, though our buffaloes have fur and the trees have needles rather than fruit. Summer traffic in our national park reminds me of some of the jams we sat through as well.
Is there corruption? Yes, but... There's corruption, and then there's Kenyan corruption. Talking about politics in a developing country is always a good way to gain perspective on the relative health of our political system. We don't have to pay to join the military or police force, they were surprised to hear, you actually get paid to sign up. And our elected officials pay taxes like the rest of us (at least they're required to by law, unlike in Kenya's parliament, which is a huge issue there right now). Actually, I think Kenya is in a really interesting position as a country only a few decades old, with a year-old constitution and elections coming up. Though no one kids himself about commonplace government malfeasance (breaking news about corruption makes page three in the paper, if you can imagine), people also seemed pretty hopeful that a new generation of politicians are on the way. Having Western oversight of that process through embassies and the UN helps, we were told.
Washington, D.C.? No, Washington state. Again, more geography. Timm's explanation of how seasons so drastically change the amount of daylight during the course of a year in Alaska fascinated people. If you live along the equator, you apparently don't give much thought to the tilt of the earth's axis.
How is college paid for? Again, a question the students were really interested in. Our mix of student loans, grants, scholarships, work study and upfront payment by the student or family is similar in some ways to the Kenyan system, and very interested to those students contemplating college. Being allowed to chose among so many options seemed to grab their attention also. Students in Kenya who do qualify for college usually don't go right out of high school either, we were told. So an 18-year-old taking a loan out to leave for a big university isn't really familiar to them — and given the rising cost of tuition here, maybe it won't be for us either.
Can I have your email address? Really popular question, even with people we'd barely met. But the answer was always yes.
After all, they already had our cell phone number.
