Wednesday October 1, 2008

Today is the Muslim holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan. It is an interesting holiday because it is not planned in advance. They go on vigil for the full moon and the evening they see it they declare the next day a holiday. So you can predict the holiday to within a couple days but you never know precisely when it is going to be until the day before. (Note: my friend Brian in Jordan also recently blogged about this phenomena). The students said that Kenya is ~30% Muslim at lunch yesterday (which is lower than I thought) but most of the Muslim population lives in the north part of the country. My class has no Muslims[1] in it so the university administration decided that they were going to take advantage of having us here and stay open for us to hold the class. So any students that show up today will be giving up their holiday. This should be a true test of the value of our class. Anyway, traffic was eerily light this morning and it took nearly 1/3rd of the time it usually take for us to cover the couple miles between the hotel and the university.

We have also seen some grand Hindu temples in town, which surprised me. I guess there was a huge influx of South Asian labor that immigrated to build the railroad. They formed a permanent community and eventually rose to positions of ownership and economic power. It seems that Indians here are regarded as an economically privileged and powerful class. When the African independence movement began, however, they did not tend to support it even though it was mirroring a similar movement in their own country. So there was some latent animosity towards the South Asians (e.g. that they did not care about Africa, just the profits it could provide). Apparently there was wide spread, post colonial, violence against South Asians in other countries. But it never escalated to that in Kenya and relations seem to be mostly amiable now.

Matt felt remarkably better today. He said the cypro was like a magic pill. Apparently it was so bad that he was concerned about malaria. But he is up for teaching today so it will be another light day for me (since I concentrated my material yesterday). This week it is going to work out that Monday and Wednesday are going to be mostly Matthew (with me helping on workshops) and Tuesday and Thursday will be mostly me. This isn’t ideal. It works out better to split the day so one of us is in charge of the morning material and the other is in charge of the evening material[2], but it is totally doable for a few days.

Every student showed up today. That is gratifying because it means that they are finding the class to be of enough personal value that they would give up a holiday to come to another day of it. We even got a new student today (on the next to last day of a 2 week class)[3]. In the final count we ended up with ~22 students. Of them 5 are women and 8 are professors. I talked with one hydrology professor today who actually teaches in a university outside of Nairobi and has been commuting to take the class. He did his Masters and PhD in Japan. Those professors who have PhD’s (only about half of them do) mostly did their studies in Europe. One of the Masters students in my class has applied for a PhD program in Germany. While Matt lectured for most of the morning, I continued to work on the Kenyan data. Most of their data runs from ’57 to ’84 but some of it goes back as far as ’27. All told I processed about 45 data sets. It was a pretty monumental task, but their data is in modeling shape[4] now.

We decided to go out to dinner for our last night in Kenya. We had received several recommendations for a place called ‘The Carnivore.’ It did not disappoint. We were given smoking hot iron plates and then men walked around with swords skewered through various slabs of meat. They planted the tip of the sword on our plates and used a huge knife to lop a piece off for us. There was beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey,[5] gizzards, liver, two kinds of ribs, sausage and, of course, crocodile. Apparently they used to be famous for serving game, but that became unpopular and the started dealing only in domesticated animals…which makes one wonder about the crocodile farm out there some where.

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[1] I have met a couple Christians who were excited to see the MA Theology line on my bio. Others (particularly professors) described themselves as ethnically Christian but actually ‘nothing’ or ‘unaffiliated’ at lunch yesterday. Still others said (with signature Kenyan joviality) they were Christian on Christian holidays and Muslim on Muslim holidays.
[2] A full day of lecturing can be exhausting.
[3] I talked to him today and he expressed regret for traveling during the class. He said is seemed like the other students had learned many valuable things.
[4] Modeling shape is a funny phrase. It reminds me of the time that Amanda told an acquaintance that her husband models professionally.
[5] This is the easiest to get a mental picture of. Imageine a whole thanksgiving turkey skewered on a sword planted on your plate and carved practically in your lap.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Matt was not feeling well last night so we decided not to go out to dinner. Apparently it just got worse and he had a very rough evening. He said he has practically manifested every symptom imaginable in 12 hours. He got up and tried to eat so he could come in to teach, but it was just too much. So I am teaching solo today. It shouldn’t be a big deal. I will rearrange the schedule so I cover stuff I am more comfortable with. I will just be tired by the end of the day.

My journal will be shorter today since I can’t write during Matt’s lectures. The morning went well. The lecture I gave in the morning was the most difficult one, but most of the students tried hard to get it. Several of them sat me down to repeat an important point from the lecture and we worked it through it until they understood. The workshops seem to be more helpful pedagogically than the lectures when there is even a mild language barrier.
The afternoon lecture did not go as well. Matt is a really conscientious worker and I knew he would not miss unless he was deathly ill. When we parted ways last night he just felt a little queasy. So I didn’t prep like I was going to carry the whole day myself. But Matt did get really sick and I should have prepped it just in case. But when we transitioned to the workshop things went more smoothly. It is difficult to run a workshop solo, since there are generally more questions than one person can field, but both of the exercises (morning and afternoon) went surprisingly smoothly.

An interesting side note about Kenyan TV. They omit the same seven words that get bleeped out of movies on TV in the US…but they add one more to the list that we don’t bleep. Any reference to God besides a direct noun is bleeped (or actually is just replaced with a silent pause). It is really instructive to watch American TV (which is usually unedited b/c they avoid the 7 words) get edited for careless use of the Holy Name. There sure are a lot of silent pauses. I am not really into legislating around the preferences of the church (especially anything that smells of censorship), but I would make a straight up swap: all seven of the banned words in TV and radio (e.g. allow F-bombs) for a few silent pauses in place of careless references to God.[1] Far too big a deal is made of F-bombs and far too little is made of the Lord’s name.

One of the great (but rapidly vanishing[2]) benefits of the developing world is the glass coke bottle. I don’t know why, but I enjoy coke out of a glass bottle 100% more than out of a plastic bottle. Each day at lunch we get a bottled coke and I like it.

Here is a map of downtown Nairobi with the University, park and hotel

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[1] I’m not talking about anti-God speech…that is using the word as a noun. I am just talking of how many times it is used as an exclamatory.
[2] I have noticed that many of the road side shops are selling coke in plastic instead.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Matt and I got new rooms last night since we had checked out for a night (so we could apply our hotel allowance to the Fig Tree Camp). They are on the north side of the hotel this time which means they look out over a park and just have much nicer views of downtown Nairobi. But the view had another surprise in store. I was ironing my shirt this morning as the sun began to rise, taking in my new view as it was slowly revealed by the increasing light, when suddenly, something was staring back at me. There was an enormous stork in the tree just outside my window. As I looked around, both trees outside my window were full of these gangly, 3 foot tall scavengers. They congregate right at the fifth floor level, so it looks like I will have company for my last few days here.

We got 2 new students today. I was pretty alarmed since modeling is cumulative and I was afraid they were going to dominate our time during the workshops getting up to speed. But they both partnered up and turned out to be so sharp that they were actually assisting their partners who had been here all week. We have added several students since we started and they are mostly up to speed. We have only lost 1. This happened in Kabul as well. The oldest professor wouldn’t partner up but just couldn’t keep up with the computer skills to understand what he was working on. He is very excited about us being here and wants to start a new department of water modeling at the University of Nairobi based on what he saw; he is just beyond the point of diving into a new piece of software.

Today is a light lecture day for me. Matt is leading the Optimization stuff this morning and then we are supposed to have some local guest lecturers this afternoon to talk about the site specific considerations of Kenyan hydrology. In particular, the embassy mandated that we include a lecture about the social impacts of water projects in African communities. The guy giving this lecture is named Ronan, which makes me smile as a Stargate Atlantis/Dinero movie reference.

(Caution, the next 3 paragraphs are mostly water politics that I found interesting but may not be).

It is a really big issue. The Navy and Kenyan Army (who have the equipment to drill wells) have suspended all well drilling in Kenya at the orders of AID because of the social impacts of new wells. This is all very important, because a well seems like an unlimited resource until you drill thousands of them…then you are essentially mining water. Groundwater is a limited resource.

Another classic example is that nomadic people have wet season grazing areas and dry season grazing areas. The off seasons give the food sources time to recover before the next grazing cycle. A well introduces a fixed, permanent water source and disrupts these rhythms and concentrate impact devastating the immediate region of the well beyond repair.

Well drilling has also exacerbated tribal rivalries in Africa and can actually exacerbate conflict. It is totally true that social aspects of water management are as important in technical aspects. After a 10 year period of intense well drilling in Sudan >50% of the wells were non-operational for some political or social reason. In my Theology of Development class at Wheaton, one of the authors I read called this ‘development archeology’ to refer to the abundant structures constructed with development objectives that exist only as useless monuments to the importance of understanding the social implications of technical solutions.

Anyway, this is why we are here. The Kenyans are exploring surface water solutions to their water problems in lieu of more wells. The first lecture was too general to be of much value, but one of my students gave the second lecture on an information system in Somalia for the second lecture. It is a tool that local governments, foreign agencies and NGO’s are using to consolidate their efforts and keep track of problems that arise with wells and other water infrastructure. It was really interesting and could be really useful to my Kenyan students. It was very much worth the time. Afterwards I talked with him about his flooding problem in Somalia. He said that there is an urban center that floods almost every year. He wants to use our software to develop a flood prediction and warning system.

The evening was mostly uneventful as I worked and prepared for Tuesday.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

I slept well at the fig tree camp, but was awoken several times by screeching monkeys or birds. I even thought I heard a hippo once[1] but this was followed by a dream about a hippo eating one of my co-workers, so I am attributing the entire episode to my imagination. We got up at 6 and were in the van by 6:30 for the early morning excursion. There were probably 15 vans in the parking area but we were the first ones out and it paid off. We hadn’t been out 15 minutes before we found a pack of lions ambling across the grass lands. There were three adult females and three sizable cubs. Eddie followed the paths so that we could stop and watch them cross in front of us several times. We followed them to a watering hole where we watched them drink, lounge and play. They seemed mostly unaware of our presence. For nearly half an hour we watched them in the quiet of the African dawn, the only van in sight. I suspect Eddie was slow to radio the sighting in so that we would have some time to watch them in solitude. The cubs did some wrestling which was a highlight.
They all looked very healthy. It was a strange contrast to see healthy animals in the park and people struggling for an existence from the arid landscape outside of the park…but it brings far more money into the region than grazing could and I do agree with the concept of lands set aside to preserve snapshots of the original creation for subsequent generations. It is just a difficult pill.

Eddie finally called the lions in. This is how it works. We scatter and when someone finds something they call it in. As we were leaving a dozen vans descended on the water hole. After that we happened upon another cheetah. While we were watching it sit and take in the buffet options it decided to head towards a herd of wildebeest on the horizon, so it passed right in front of us. Then we headed back to camp, passing an ostrich and numerous gazelle and wart hogs on the way. (I have put some additional pictures here.)

After a predictably good breakfast we packed up, watched some monkeys eat figs from the tree outside our cabin and then headed out. Two final animals of note on the way out: mongeese (plural of mongoose?) and a secretary bird. The secretary bird was the most memorable from the vast stuffed bird exhibit at the Nairobi museum. It has the head the body of a raptor but the legs of a stork. Very eccentric. One thing this trip has done is renewed my interest in studying ecology at UCD. Of course, I have also been thinking about the great international development classes they offer as well. But first I must finish the dissertation which I have not touched here.

I did some work on the way home. Processing data on dirt and cobble roads is a neat trick, but I embraced it as a challenge and got a couple hours of work done. We are trying to build some models of Kenyan watersheds before we go but their data is in rough shape and needs some work before it can be imported. Most of the data records start at 1957 and are various lengths, the longest being 30 years. Apparently the Dutch built gaging stations in the late 50’s and they eventually fell into disrepair. I have proposed a gage rehabilitation project as a relatively low cost option to improve Kenyan water management capabilities. Since the gages are already in place, it would not be expensive to fit them with some new technology and train university staff to manage and trouble shoot them. An unexpected byproduct of the data processing, I can now name every leap year in the between ’56 and ’88. There’s a fun trick at parties.

The ride home was shorter than the ride out but still topped 6 hours. When I got in I did some e-mail, wrote and went to the gym. We skipped lunch without noticing. We have been skipping about 1 meal per day here, usually breakfast or dinner. Then, at 6 I settled down with Naan from the Indian restaurant (which is one of the best things I’ve had here), a Tusker malt lager and processed some data with an American football game on in the background. It was a really nice evening. My fantasy football team is in rough shape though. I am looking at an 0-4 start after 3 of my first 4 opponents put up the weekly high scores. Even with Favre’s 6 touchdowns (which I was independently thrilled about), 3 of them went to a receiver on my opponent’s team. Not my year I guess.

Barely able to stay awake I tried my wife one more time, and got her. It was really nice to talk to her in person. Matt was saying on Friday that he was approaching the longest he and Nicole had been apart in their 10 years of marriage. My PhD work kept Amanda and I apart for longer before this, but it is much harder with a toddler. I am really anxious to get back into my daughter’s life.

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[1] Apparently it was not uncommon for hippos to forage in the river next to our tent during the night.

Saturday September 27, 2008

So we had the weekend off and managed to find a reasonable 2 day safari package to the Masi Mara wildlife park that got us back Sunday night, in time to teach again on Monday. Eddie, an English speaking guide for Steve’s Safari Company, picked Matt and I up at the hotel at 6:30. It is a 10 passenger van, with a pop top, but it is just Matt and I. We left Nairobi to the West and it did not take long for things to get very rural. About an hour into the trip we went over the ridge, turned a corner and could see the Great Rift Valley.

Eddie made a pre-determined stop for us to take pictures and look at the valley. A dormant volcano dominated the landscape. The rift valley extends from the Jordan Valley (Dead Sea) through the Red Sea, the Great Rift Valley in Kenya and all the way to Mozambique. As soon as we stepped out two guys came along side us and started chatting us up like we were in some kind of bizarro singles bar. They owned the gift shop and were to be our designated personal interlocutors for the bargaining experience. I got a drum for Charis and something for Amanda but I almost left without the drum…the price plummeted by several 10% increments in the last 30 seconds of the transaction. I still probably overpaid.

Then we began the long drive through the rift valley. The roads were pretty bad, but are under construction. The dominant figures in the rift valley are the Masi tribe who are a nomadic people that make their living herding goats and cows. The wear distinctive bright red cloaks. The total drive to the park boundary was ~6 hours. About half an hour before we entered the park the goats and cows began to give way to gazelle, wildebeest, Cape Buffalo (our first of the ‘Big Five’) and a group of 5 giraffes. The giraffes were particularly remarkable. With the zebras they remind me of Chesteton’s ‘The Ethics of Elfland’ where he says something like: we grow accustomed to the apple being red but wonder exists in the moment that we recognize that it could have been any other color. If apples were all green, the red apple would seem absolutely magical. A life of wonder involves forgetting that apples are red and being awed by the remarkable happening each time. This kind of wonder is easier to muster with the unfamiliar. (I think I’ll try to expand on this idea in my main blog).

The other phenomena that stood out as we approached the park gate was the red robes the Masi were wearing began to get brighter and they tended to be sitting in small groups by the road with ornate weapons rather than herding goats. It became clear that these ‘villages’ were simulated Masi communities[1] as cultural experiences for the tourists. I had read about the aggressive Masi selling strategies and we experienced them at the park gate. As our driver went in to pay the fee several Masi came up to our window dropping their wares in our laps and repeating the price ad nauseum after we had declined. One of them even touched to the bulge in my pocket (through the van window) which represented my wallet and said ‘you pay money.’ Now, I understand the complexities of introducing tourism into a marginalized and oppressed culture. But the whole simulated culture thing makes me very uncomfortable. Even the greeters at our restaurant that are dressed up as Masi and are not trying to get any money from us make me uncomfortable. It feels like voyeurism. It is not like they are just another savannah species for us to gawk at. Our driver wants to stop at one of the ‘villages’ on the way out. I’m not too psyched.

As soon as we crossed the park boundary the vegetation changed. Without the livestock grazing the grass lands were just that, grass lands with the occasional, lonely, savannah tree. We saw our first heard of zebras, a jackal, warthogs and a variety of gazelle. We finally arrived at the Fig Tree Camp around 1:00. The camp is hard to describe. It is beautiful. We crossed a major river using a thatched bridge and emerged into a ‘tent’ village. I am sure there is some law preventing permanent structures in the park that requires these to be tents rather than cabins, but they are ‘tents’ in the same ‘letter of the law’ spirit that the Mississippi gambling docks are ‘boats’. They have full bathrooms, stone foundations, roofs, beds and electricity. Ours is right on the river. Lunch at the camp was very good. It is populated mainly by Europeans (we guess Germans and Dutch by the inordinate percentage of blonds) as we have not heard much English spoken. After lunch I took some time to write before our first official Safari (the previous sightings were incidentals on the way in). Apparently the predators mainly emerge at dusk and dawn so our main two ‘hunts’[2] will be this evening and tomorrow morning.

Our evening safari started out with hippos. There were nearly a dozen of them periodically surfacing. They are enormous. I really like hippos. Then, many gazelle later, we passed a small heard of elephants. It included a baby that Eddie guessed was 2 weeks old. Then we drove for a while until we saw a line of 8 or so other vehicles near a pack of Impallas, only no one was looking at the impallas. They were all looking at a nearby bush that ended up containing a Jaguar who had been eyeing the heard. He gave up on the heard and walked away, and we finally got a good view and a couple of pictures. Apparently the Jaguar is considered the holy grail of the safari, but everyone I have talked to has seen one. I think it is the black rhino that is the biggest find since there are only like 400 of them, but no one talks them up because it is an expectation they can’t fulfill. Still the Jaguar was really impressive.

Then we proceeded to a nearby river (and another crowd of vehicles) and got to see a second jaguar. This is pretty much how it works. The vans scatter and see the standard stuff (gazelle, elephants, hippos) until one of them happens on something special. Then they radio out and everyone converges to see it. There were a few range rovers with movie cameras there as well. Eddie said it was the National Geographic people doing a documentary. I think it is interesting that in all of those nature shows I used to watch, there were probably roads and tourists just off camera. After that we headed back. We had spent a significant chunk of time staking out the jaguar. There was a brilliant sunset on the way home. But our evening wasn’t done yet. Just before our camp we happened upon a cheetah stalking some gazelles. He passed in front of our van by no more than100 ft. He eventually gave up on the gazelles, but was a grand finale. All and all, a very fun outing. As we were driving home, standing with our heads out of the van, wind in our hair and the African sun setting to our backs, I said to Matt, “This was not something I foresaw when I applied to work at HEC.”

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[1] Which is weird for many reasons, but just one is that nomadic peoples do not have static villages to simulate.
[2] Metaphorical, of course.

Friday September 26, 2008

I finally slept last night. I crashed at 9:45 and woke up to the sun for the first time at 6:15. That still gave me enough time to go to the gym and iron dry some of the cloths I washed in the tub last night before I had to leave. I still feel tired though. Too many days of 4-5 hrs sleep. Today we are planning on a shorter day, ending ~3:00. So we are thinking about going to Nairobi national park. Apparently you can see most of the range land animals that live in Kenya (including what they call ‘the big five’) in this large wildlife park 15 minutes outside of the city. Obadiah (our driver) said that the afternoon is the worst time to see the cool animals (pretty much the predators) and that we would probably only see zebras and giraffes and stuff like that. But we told him that it was our only opportunity since we are going to Masi Mara this weekend and that zebras and giraffes sounded fun to us. Then, first thing in the morning tomorrow, we will catch a van at our hotel to take the 7 hr drive across the rift valley to the Masi Mara game refuge which Obadiah says is one of the best places in all of Africa.

The lunches at the school have been a highlight of our time here. They are catered by an on campus restaurant, but it is really just one lady who makes a big pot of rice and some very authentic (though on the nice side of authentic I think) local dish. It is often some sort of beef and ‘gravy’ but today was the most fun. It was goat spare ribs. They were super good (if a bit chewy). Apparently goat is very popular. One of the students said it costs 50% more than beef. He said that if you are having a party with lots of friends it is practically compulsory that you buy a goat and slaughter it right there before you barbecue it. The other fun part of lunch today was a Kenyan bread called Ogalli. My first reaction to Ogalli was ‘hmm, they brought a wad of bread dough and forgot to cook it.’ But apparently it is cooked in a pot of water so, it was very cooked but squishy like dough. It also wasn’t a yeasty bread so it was extremely dense. Very fun. One of the other students said that they have ogalli pretty much every day.

Class let out late as the students stuck around to practice. By the time we got out it was too late to go to the park. So Matt and I took the opportunity to explore downtown Nairobi. We started out strolling around the park across the street. It was really nice. A great, clean urban park with a lake, sculpture, fountains, and an extremely competitive volleyball match. The way the African trees and flowers off set the Nairobi skyline was really striking. There are also these huge storks everywhere. Sometimes it seems like you could be in a European city until one of these giant storks flies by, like a St Bernard size pigeons.

After the park we swung around downtown a bit. It was similarly nice. Unfortunately we got hustled. A guy walked up and claimed to be a teacher and started asking us about US history, which I was open too b/c this happened in Nepal all the time. English teachers would approach me too practice their English and it was a fun way to interact. Then he asked for money. Not a big deal but it kind of tainted an otherwise really nice outing.

Thursday September 25, 2008

So my first impressions of Nairobi have held up during my first few days here. It is a really attractive city. It is remarkably green with an extraordinary number of trees for a city this size and a substantial park system. Traffic is an issue, we get stuck in gridlock on our way to and from the University each day, but it does not have the same frantic feel of an Asian city since I have not heard a horn honk since I have arrived[1]. The most striking physical feature of the city, however, is the abundance and quality of landscaping in public spaces. There are flowers everywhere. This might just be because we are approaching spring in the southern hemisphere, but extreme care has been taken everywhere we have gone to spruce up the major roads with flowering bushes and trees. Now, so far I have only really been downtown, to the embassy and to the university, but each of these routes have left the impression of an economically viable urban center that takes substantial pride in the aesthetics of the built environment. You could certainly make the case that they are more concerned with urban aesthetics than we are…or at least in a different way.

This strongly positive impression might have to do, however, with a strong class system that my Olympian student was telling us about yesterday. Apparently Nairobi has two major slums, and one of them is the largest in Africa. Apparently the police do not even go to these places. There may be a really dramatic spatial separation of prosperity and poverty. I can’t really comment because my driver has strict instructions about where I am and am not allowed to go. But as far as the economic, political and educational centers, Nairobi is much nicer than I expected based on my experiences in Nepal and Afghanistan.

The temperature was also surprising. The climate can only be described as San Diego-esque. Since we are so close to the equator there is very little seasonal variation in temperature. What is surprising is that the daily range, year round, falls between mid-50’s and mid-70’s. I can not really explain how an equatorial, inland city at the base of a mountain range has this kind of temperate climate. But it is really nice. Some of the green suits (who, once again, were not wearing green – which was a little disorienting because they talked like Army officers) commented on it yesterday saying “It is no wonder some people come here and never leave.”

Today Ken talked to me about the possibility of returning for another trip or longer, say a month to a year. They are looking for someone to coordinate the program in Djibouti which he says really isn’t somewhere you would want to transplant a family, but they would consider someone in Nairobi since it is a regional position. It would be a promotion too. I honestly hadn’t given Africa much consideration long term but it could be an interesting opportunity. I applied for a 1 year position in Istanbul last year on the premise that Amanda and I wanted to get overseas with kids to evaluate if had potential as a longer term lifestyle for us. Something like this could serve the same basic purpose while being pretty useful to the water community in East Africa.

Matt and I are planning on having dinner with a UCD professor tonight. She is doing some waste water work here. We discovered the Tusker Malt last night. Great beer. Light, complex smell, almost like a wine. Not what either of us expected from a malt.

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[1] Contrast to the 1 to 3 honks/minute per car in Kathmandu.