Week 7: Lots of work, but countless dik-diks in return

 I worked a lot this week--everyday in fact. Everyone in the office I worked in left (to go in the field) so I was by myself the last couple days. Since I wasn't even interacting with IMPACT employees, my plan was to work from home on Thursday, but I forgot my mouse at the office, so I had to go back. There is no way I can work in Canva without a mouse. I finished the brochure for Twala. I will share it on here. 

Let's just say that Chatgpt and I spent many long hours getting that to look right. Chat is quite an annoying perfectionist. I sent it off to the powers that be from IMPACT and to the person in charge at Twala. I got good feedback from IMPACT, but the person from Twala never said anything, so I'm not sure what she thinks. The director at IMPACT has sent me all this info to look over from their social enterprise (side business that helps to fund IMPACT) so that either means he was trying to find something more for me to do, or he thought I might have something useful to contribute.

I was also asked to write a generic concept note that they could adapt for all their agroecology projects. They said that this way, I could still help them design projects after I go back to Canada. This felt way out of my comfort zone! First of all, I never even knew what a concept note was until I came here and was asked to do one for Mathare. I had to google what is a concept note and how to write one. Second of all, who am I to design a project for them?! I just worked on a regenerative farm in a temperate rain forest. I don't know very much about gardening in arid and semi arid climates. So that was very hard for me. I wrote one for them to use for helping to legitimize pastoralists. Pastoralist are often blamed for degrading their rangelands while other concerns like renewable energy and conservation is given priority over their needs. But actually they use very careful practices to protect the rangelands so that it will be available to use over and over. They practice a lot of agroecology practices. It didn't really touch on my own knowledge and experience, but they seemed more interest in that sort of focus. 

I sent it off for the team to review and give me feedback...and it has been crickets. So I am not sure what to do about that. I have been thinking about it ever since and second guessing what I wrote it on. I plan to write another one more about growing food and better utilizing their kitchen garden spaces, so hopefully they will like that one better. 

As I mentioned earlier, I wasn't even going to go in on Thursday. I spent the time working by myself in a vacant office, but the director arranged for the kids and I to have this amazing trip. When I met him, he commented that I hadn't really had any field experience and asked when I was leaving. He provided a driver and car to take us up to Samburu to go for a game drive there. So on Friday we were picked up  and driven 2 hours north to Archers, Samburu and driven around the park. Communication was not clear to me. I didn't know where we would be staying and even that we would go to the park that day. 

The game drive was so much fun. We saw so many different animals that we hadn't seen in Nairobi, like elephants, a rare species of zebra (grevy's zebra), oryx, gerenuks, kudus, gazelles, jackals, so many dik-diks and a different kind of giraffe. If you are like me, you don't even know what most of those animals are. I hope these pics help. 

Grevy's Zebra

Oryx

dik-dik-they are so small and camouflage well. They remind me of Ali and a bunny.

baby kudu

Gazelle

gerenuk

Jackal

another dik-dik--you can see this one's horns

After a hot day of driving around with no air conditioning--nobody seems to use it here--we drove to where we were staying. It was a mystery to us. Honestly, as we were driving, I had some thoughts like "please not there." All my fears were for naught. We stayed at a beautiful home owned by a French Canadian woman called the dik-dik lodge. It had a pool. The kids were happy. That night we were fed a fancy meal cooked by her chef. 

However, when it was time to go to bed, we started noticing the bugs. The kids room had an ant problem. There were so many ants that Malachi stomped on. Luckily my room didn't have that problem. BUT, when I was getting ready for bed, I saw a HUGE spider that moved super fast...so I went in and woke up Elizabeth. (They were told before we came to Kenya one of their jobs would be to deal with the creepy crawlies.) Everyone else was in bed. So she dutifully got up and brought Malachi's shoe. She looked thoroughly disgusted but moved forward to take care of it. And then it moved...it was so fast--like a cockroach! And it came right towards us, which sent us stifling screams into the hallway. That was the end of it. There was no making her deal with it at that point. And it was no longer in my room so we went to bed.

The next morning we got up early to continue our game drive. Unfortunately neither of the reds had a good sleep, so they were very tired and grumpy at the start. That made it a little awkward since we were being taken around by someone just trying to show us a good time. Thankfully when they pulled out the cold drinks and Elizabeth had a sprite she perked right up. It was like night and day. We spent a lot of time in the morning trying to find lions. We asked so many other safari tours, and the director made calls to the people who study them...but it is hard to find lions in that park. While we were searching, we saw 2 Somali ostriches--a male and a female. The male was doing his mating dance which was really cool to see, until it worked...and then it was a little "disturbing." Elizabeth said she didn't want to see that much of nature. haha.

Eventually we did find one lioness. We were able to drive up really close to her. So close that we had to roll up the windows. That was pretty awesome to just be able to observe her sitting in the shade. 

After finding the lioness we went for lunch at this amazing little safari resort at the other end of the park. It had a pool but the kids hadn't brought their suits. We had a buffet lunch where we were treated super well because the director knows everybody. One of the workers was his cousin. While we were eating, a troop of baboons came to the watering hole. Some of them were massive!

After lunch the kids swam (I had to buy Lizzie a bathing suit bottom from the gift shop and Malachi went in his clothes.) Strangely, most of us the people who used the pool were older people. There were only a couple other kids. 

We did more driving around and saw elephants and a family of Impalas and so many dik-diks.

Impalas

this is an anthill!

 It was super fun and memorable. This morning we drove back to Nanyuki and then back to Nairobi. It is nice to be back in our own space again. But I miss the more rural areas. The city is so big and crowded. Tomorrow I'm back at Mathare. I have so much left that I want to do and so little time. 2 months is just too short.

I couldn't resist this video of Malachi trying to get warm before jumping into the pool. He'll probably kill me for it.