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.

Wednesday September 24, 2008

Woke up at 3:30 again and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I did some reading, writing and talk prep until 6 and then made my way down to the gym. The hotel gym is excellent though it took me a little while to do the lbàkg conversion on the free weights. The gym was packed at 6am. I was a little surprised that I was struggling more than usual on the treadmill until I realized that we were 5450 ft above sea-level. That is the same elevation(ish) as Denver and Kathmandu. ‘Mile high.’

This morning 4 unfamiliar white guys showed up at the class. Turns out they were big wigs. Army commanders and captains. One was in charge of the Horn of Africa program that brought us in and another was in charge of ‘engagement’ (their word for proactive development to avoid future conflict) for all of Africa, trying to figure out what is working on the horn that could have broader application. They are intense, self declared, type A’s that want to do good work but want to do it as soon as possible which does not necessarily synch up with African culture or US Development culture (this is their description but it aligned with my observations).

I am understanding the politics of American development in Africa. It is a bit dry, so feel free to skip to the next paragraph. But I am finding it fascinating, particularly because we have not given up totally on a long term future in development or, at the least, continued sporadic involvement. US AID has a better understanding of the needs and social implications of development projects. And everyone is suspicious of the military. But they do not have the technical water expertise. Federal water experts like me are employed by the Corps of Engineers. It doesn’t make sense to most people (including me most of the time) why water engineering is under the military umbrella in our country, but that is just the way it is. For the development folks to tap into technical expertise it would behoove them to warm up to the Military who has money, experts and interest and seems more than happy to be subordinate to the AID agenda (if not the pace) as long as it encourages stability. Seems like they could learn a lot from the Kabul model here where the USAID office is composed of ~50% Hydraulic Engineers borrowed from the Corps of Engineers.

I gave the soil loss method lecture this morning. This is my favorite lecture in this class because it is more in my areas of expertise of soils and ground water. But it was a pretty technical lecture and I’m not sure how into it they were. The professors were scribbling notes and had good questions that indicated they were tracking but it might have been too intense for the other students. I guess if anyone was going to get something out of the lecture it should be the professors b/c they will propagate it to decades of future practitioners without the crazy American accent and antics. I think I should take notes from Matt’s lecture style. He takes his time and is careful to speak clearly. The workshop went quite well. Those are always fun because you get to interact with the students.


One of the professors in my class was an Olympic athlete many years ago. He ran the 400 hurdles (a blistering personal best of 49.0 s). He now helps oversee the training of the middle distance runners for the Kenyan team. He said that most of the tea plantations in the east are owned by ex-athletes. It is the quickest way to ascend to the highest social class.

Another one of my students brought in some rain gage data. It was in a strange format so I wrote a program to process it during one of Matt’s lectures. Here is 30 years of rainfall data (below). Apparently 1962 was the flood of record…and it was 3X bigger than the next one. They were telling me stories about it. Entire houses disappeared. If you think about it, that is more than 15cm/hr for 24 straight hours. They say that Lake Victoria raised 5 m and is still higher than historic levels, as the result of that storm 30 years later. Several of the students are getting data together so we can help them build models next week. We could get several models of Kenyan watersheds with water issues started before we leave.

Matt and I booked a Safari today for Saturday and Sunday. Since we get money for food and a hotel those days anyway it turns out to be very affordable. I think I am more excited about seeing the Rift Valley than the lions and elephants, but they will be cool too. Tonight we are going to try the Indian restaurant in the hotel.

Amanda e-mailed me about new tricks that Charis is doing. It is a lot harder to be away with a toddler. She just changes so fast. At least she hasn’t forgotten me. Amanda said she saw a picture of me and said da-da. I am excited that they have decided to come on my next trip with me. I am going to Portland to take part in an interagency meeting on Dam Removal (my dissertation topic and something I am really interested in) 10 days after I return. It is a 1 hr direct flight, so it won’t be a big deal to bring Charis. And downtown Portland is very fun.

Tuesday September 23, 2008

First a couple explanatory notes from yesterday. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Okapi because it was my favorite animal throughout elementary school and I read every encyclopedia and book I could find that mentioned it. I think I mainly liked having a favorite animal that was all my own (e.g. rather than being one of seven kids in my 2nd grade class who wanted to write their report on wolves) and the arrogance of having a favorite animal most adults had never heard of. But I was obsessed.

Second I am really interested in hominid fossils because of their theological implications. I have no problem with most of the evolutionary narrative from a Francis Collins “BioLogos” sort of theologically superintended mechanism perspective. But I find the early human stuff tricky[1] and, therefore fascinating. Somewhere early on I became confident that my faith could bear the most rigorous scrutiny and began pressing into doubts rather than fleeing them. So I find the early hominids really interesting.

Today was our first day with students. We left for the University at 7:45 to get set up for an 8:30 start. At 8:30 we had 0 students. By 9 we had 8. At 9:30 we had 12 and got started. A few more trickled in as the day went on. This surprised no one including me.

The students are from 3 different organizations. About half of them are university students or professors (about equal representation of graduate students and professors/lecturers) from the departments of Geology, Meteorology, Geography and Civil Engineering. Most of the rest of the students are government engineers and hydrologists from the ministry of water and irrigation. Finally, there are two engineers from Somalia. Somalia and Yemen apparently had interest in participating in the program and but have been deemed too dangerous (which surprises me for a Navy program). So two Somali engineers came to Kenya for the class.

Today was full. 3 lectures and a workshop. I was responsible for the second lecture and the workshop at the end of the day. My first lecture went pretty well. I had their attention for most of it. Then at 11 we took a ‘tea’ break. This was a very pleasant surprise as we were each provided with a somosa and a doughnut. This was probably the best somosa I have ever had and the fried dough was not bad either. Since I only had a snack for breakfast it was very welcome. I think this will solve my breakfast dilemma.

I talked with the Somali engineer during break. Apparently he is Kenyan and lives in Nairobi. The Kenyans apparently take at least some of the management responsibilities for water in Somalia but he was saying that he often will not go for months at a time due to security concerns. We talked about a flooding problem on the Ethiopian border where all of the water comes from Ethiopia but the issues are in Somalia, disincentivizing the Ethiopians from mitigation. International water is always so much more complex. He was very excited about an algorithm I had lectured about that he expected would help with his analysis.

The students’ English was great and most of them picked up the model surprisingly quickly. A couple of them finished the workshop in an hour and all of them finished by the end of the day. They seem mostly very eager, particularly the professors who are already talking to us about projects they want to do. A couple of the students are going to bring data in so we can build some models of Kenyan watersheds next week. The applications they are interested in are extremely interesting and practical. It should be a very good class.

I crashed for an hour and a half when we got home at 5. The jet lag is catching up with me. Then I went down to the bar and had some dinner and a local beer while I prepared lectures for tomorrow. The local beer is called ‘Tusker.’ It was very good and I found the label entertaining and a little dark:

“Tusker lager has been brewed in East Africa since 1922. Named after the elephant that killed one of the brewers founders, Tuskers claims that the special heritage of being one of the first beers in East Africa.”

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[1] One of the problems is with my dualist philosophy of mind. If God used progressive evolution to create humans, at what point did he give them a soul. Or if he used a Genesis type special creation for humans (say, a historical Adam, the position I prefer exegetically) was it post Australopithecus. Was Adam the first homo-erectus? Or were these migrating tool makers still animals in the sense that chimps are intelligent, sentient, communal tool makers that share 97% of human genetics but do not bear the ‘image of God.’ Since Adam was a Mesopotamian it would seem that he was later than homo-erectus (who was the first to leave Africa 2.8 my ago, but spread very quickly). And hovering over the whole question is the issue of why does God seem to want to ‘warm up’ with bipedal, hominid evolution before the special creation of humans. I think it the answer relates to the fact that when we talk about God as creator we think of him as an engineer, building a functional system, rather than an artist, creating beauty and sublime complexity. I don’t loose sleep over this, but it is a fun puzzle to tackle.

Monday September 22, 2008

Today I woke up at 4 and couldn’t get back to sleep so I got up and wrote some of my sermon for the Tuesday I get back. I went down to get breakfast at 7. Now that I know the exchange rate I realize that the breakfast is a little pricy. I may look for other options. I met Ken and Matt at 8:40 to go to the university. No teaching today, just introductions and set up.

We will be teaching at the Physical Sciences Campus of the University of Nairobi. It is a nice campus. We met with our contact first, Professor Bongo, an ebullient, 45ish geology professor. The Navy agency that had set the training up had limited the class size at 20, but Prof Bongo suggested that they were expecting closer to 30. Matt and I feel like the more the merrier, so we are going ahead with the larger class. Then we began a series of visitations and formal introductions as we dropped by the offices of the Chair of Geology, the Chair of Physical Sciences and the Chair of Computing Sciences in turn. Each of these men were gracious, encouraging, and grateful for our efforts. There is an intriguing mix of formality and congeniality in our official interactions here. Everyone is exceptionally friendly but there is an almost British sense of order and propriety to the proceedings. One interesting interaction during one of these meetings was a question about Obama’s chances. They are seemingly very proud of Obama’s Kenyan roots excited about his prospects at becoming the American President.

After the introductions we were escorted to the computer lab, which had 50 machines, of which 21 worked. But the ones that worked, worked well and Matt and I had all of the software loaded in less than 90 minutes. This went far smoother than any of us had expected.

At noon we went to the embassy to meet with our military point of contact. We ate at the embassy cafeteria. They had an African option but it featured tripe, so I went with the far less adventurous, but totally eatable pizza. Captain Mike explained Secretary Rice’s foreign policy tripod of defense, diplomacy and development. Apparently there is some consternation that the D’s are mixing with the Navy getting involved in development. There are some legitimate concerns about the social and ecological implications of some of the water infrastructure projects and it has become a bit of a battlefield between the D’s. So we learned some surprisingly interesting politics. Then we were briefed on ‘the rules.’ No busses, a 10:00 pm curfew, 3 drinks per day, crime is a bigger concern than terrorism. It was all very serious and military. One interesting contrast with Kabul…none of the green suits actually wore green. One of the rules was that no one wears military uniforms to avoid being targeted. The Captain we met with was dressed in suit and tie. This is a strange contrast to Kabul where even of the DOD civilians had to wear uniforms…presumably so they knew who to extract. I think this is a better plan.

We got out of the Embassy by 2:30 with no further responsibilities so Matt and I decided to go to the Nairobi Museum. It was pretty sparse (the snake house, which sounds very cool, was closed for restoration) but there were a couple of very good exhibits. They specialized in early physical anthropology…hominid fossils. It was pretty helpful and interesting. They also had a stuffed okapi and I got to regale Matt with my encyclopedic knowledge of a random animal. Unfortunately I forgot the pin number to the cell phone (cell phone use is not something I am known for being particularly good at) so we had an hour and a half to kill and Matt helped me with a couple of things in my later lectures that weren’t clear. He is a hydrology specialist so he has more experience with the material than I do.
I figured out my phone and am trying to call my wife. No luck. Tomorrow we start teaching. I should get to bed. Here is a line from a soccer game yesterday:

Announcer during the Chelsea-Man United game after Chelsea scored the equalizer in the 79th minute: “Chelsea proving far more resilient than their shirt sponsor.” On their shirts? AIG

September 21, 2008

I woke up at 5 this morning which was a pleasant surprise. Read my Luke commentary for a couple hours and then went down to breakfast. The hotel breakfast was vast. I got some bread and fruit and would have been happy with that, but then realized that I had overlooked 2/3rds of the buffet. The most interesting item was a ‘pork pudding’ which was a gelatinous purple disk that tasted a little like sausage.

The rest of the morning I worked on my lectures. I had the TV on in the background for a while. It is a Sunday and half of the channels have soccer, rugby or Australian football on. I watched a lot of rugby while I was sick in Nepal and it was a complete mystery. I Wiki’d some of the rules and can actually follow the games now.

At noon I met with my colleagues and driver for lunch. We crossed town for ~20 minutes to an international food court/banking center and grocery store near the new embassy (to eat, change money and get some water). The African food options did not look promising so Matt and I got Indian. It was a very nice place with a very international crowd, but not very African. Apparently (according to Navy regs) we are not allowed to do any exploring on foot unless it is in pairs, so I will have to convince either Matt or Ken to go out with me. But the drive was sufficient to give me some first impressions of Nairobi.

In general, Nairobi seems to be cleaner, greener and more economically vibrant than I had expected. The roads are quite good and there are parks, flowers and trees all over. It is actually a very attractive town in many places. Ken, who has been here before, said that he thought that there was a noticeable improvement from a year ago, the last time he was here.

The soil is actually one of the things that is most striking and novel. It is bright red. I remember this was a running theme in the movie Blood Diamond where it was a symbol for Africa’s historical violence. But since, empirically, red means iron it leaves me with the unmistakable impression of a resource rich place.

This evening it is more lecture prep and a trip to the gym.

Day 1ish

Charis woke up at 6 this morning and I went and got her so we could hang out for an hour before I left. She saw the suitcase and was super clingy. She wanted to be held and wouldn’t go to grandma. She cried when I left which is really unusual and heartbreaking. I am in a stretch of traveling 8 of 14 weeks and it is not providing my daughter with a predictable set of parental relationships.

We caught an 8:00 Northwest flight to Minneapolis and from there flew to Amsterdam. We got into Amsterdam at 6 am so, the rule of thumb is that we should have slept on the trans-Atlantic flight…except 6 am Amsterdam time is 9 pm pacific time. So I did some studying and sermon prep and watched 2 movies. The first one was the new Narnia movie. There were some unfortunate thematic licenses taken (most glaring was the completely unnecessary sexual tension between Susan and Caspian which will just exacerbate ‘the problem of Susan’ in the adaption of book 7) but on the whole it was a very good movie. I honestly was on the verge of tears several times, but I think it was because I was more vested in the characters than a 100 minute movie allowed for. There was a very real sense in which I felt like they were making my story. I guess this is what other people felt like watching Pride and Prejudice or the Harry Potter movies. The other one was Speed Racer, a highly stylized film by the Wichoski brothers that flopped at the box office. It was surprisingly entertaining.

I also got a couple of new MP3 albums for the trip: The Decemberists’ Picaresque
( which means ‘humorous adventure stories, starring roguish antiheroes’) and Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanica (which seemed appropriate for obvious reasons). After a couple listens, they are both good, but the Decemberists’ album might be really good.

Amsterdam to Kenya was uneventful. Surprisingly it was approximately the same length of flight as Minneapolis to Amsterdam. I would have thought the latter would have been longer. We got into Kenya late and our driver was waiting to take us to our hotel. We have 2 days before we have to teach. Tomorrow will be a sleep in/explore day, then Monday is a setup and prep day. I will reserve my first impressions of Nairobi for tomorrow.

Off to Kenya

So I am off to Kenya. This will be my first time in Africa and I am pretty excited about it. Let's start with why I am going. The Navy is bringing me and a partner in to teach computational hydrology as part of a program to build water resources capacity in the horn of Africa.

A little known component of the Bush foreign policy involves using military funds to build water infrastructure in the horn of Africa. This is intended to head off future water related violence. While I am no fan of the sitting president, I am pretty shocked that these aspects of his foreign policy would not be of enough interest to the American public to be news worthy. I think it illustrates what a truncated picture of our government’s activities the entertainment industry actually provides us while generating a narrative it deems profitable. It is a program that I am proud to be a small part of.

We will be teaching government engineers and university professors how to use hydrology software. This is a little off-specialty for me (I am more of a hydraulics guy than a hydrology guy) but I taught this class in Afghanistan and used the software extensively before I specialized so it is still in my wheelhouse.

We will be there for two weeks including a weekend and are planning outings typical for first time visitors to the continent...including a Safari. So I am hoping to post pictures of large predatory mammals. Until then, I will try to keep a running journal on this page.