Dust, dust and more dust!

A friend, Jill, suggested I post this photograph of my foot on my blog. Not quite the sort of photograph I’d normally post of myself (or even have taken!). Despite being a very fine foot (not sure Teva would use it for advertising though!), it really is very, very dirty! It is an indication of just how dry and dusty it is here at the moment. Jill, another friend, MaryAnne, and I were away last weekend at a small lake next to Lake Naivasha. We had a great time relaxing and enjoying the plentiful wildlife that was right on our doorstep – hippo, gazelle, dikdik, impala, zebra, hartebeest, giraffe, bright pink flamingo, and many, many other species of birds. One of the striking things over the weekend was the number of dust devils that we saw, one of which was particularly dense and wide. I wouldn’t have liked to have been in its path. The other striking memory is of the amount of smoke, and sometimes flames, that we could see from bush fires. Everywhere is so, so dry. On our final morning we went in search of the main lake, and after walking for an hour or so along paths thick with dust (some of which was following in the wake of a herd of cattle being led to drink), eventually found it. Hence, the dirty foot (the other one was equally so!). Thankfully, the rains seem to have started now, though it’s going to take a lot of rain to provide all the water that’s desperately needed in this dry, dusty and parched land.

Bony Bovines

Most of the year, but particularly during the hot dry season, it’s fairly normal in Nairobi to come across herds of cattle being led along or across the road by Masai herdsmen. We often have herds in the plot of land outside our office window, the jingling of cowbells indicating their arrival. The cattle are brought towards the city in search of pasture as the land becomes increasingly dry, and the grass brown (the rains are due the end of this month). This morning was no exception. I was driving to work from Karen, having overnighted with friends after home group, and took the ring road. (A word of explanation here – it will be the ring road one day. At the moment, it’s a very dusty (especially at this time of year), bumpy and narrow murram track, but it provides a good route for me to get to work, as it bypasses some of the worst traffic hold-ups. It can itself be a bottleneck however, particularly in the rains when it becomes a quagmire, or when something slightly too wide comes the other way! This time of year, clouds of dust (which can be seen from afar) signal the approach of another vehicle. A number of vehicles had their headlights on this morning in an attempt to be slightly more visible.) Immediately after turning onto the ring road, the route ahead of me was blocked by a mass of bony bovine backsides! However, it wasn’t long before the 2 Masai steered them off the road so that I could continue on my dusty way.

Sunbirds on the balcony

A friend recently gave me a sunbird feeder. It’s a relatively simple design, with an upturned bottle in a metal wire ‘nest’, the open end of the bottle resting in a small pyrex dish. The physics of why all the water doesn’t run out is quite something. All to do with equal and opposite forces, or at least that’s what I’ve concluded in my attempts to dredge up my A-level physics! Initially I included some red food colouring in the sugar solution in order to attract the birds. It took them a week or so to figure out that this hanging object that had appeared on my balcony was something good. The downside was sticky patches over my balcony and plants, where the sweet syrup had either been splashed, or alternatively where a mob of sunbirds had upset the balance on the suspended bottle. (I initially thought I had an infestation of some sort, until I realised what it actually was!) By the time I came back from Togo, the bottle was empty. Since then, I’ve refilled a couple of times, though now I use a glucose solution which is clear. It is delightful to watch the birds, such as the variable sunbird in the photo, come and feed.

Other Images from Togo and Ghana

I didn’t have too much opportunity to explore Kara, my days there being mostly taken up with workshop sessions, meeting with people outside of that such as for one-on-one training, and keeping up with office emails. We did however go on a trip one afternoon to a local women’s cooperative where they use the income they generate from quilting for literacy classes, and to the market. This was a hive of activity. Vegetables (including yams which resembled small muddy logs), meat, colourful fabrics, ……..

Our journey back from Kara to Accra was uneventful though long: 14 hours door to door. This was perhaps an hour longer than it might have been had it not been for our van driver. We’d negotiated with him at the Togo-Ghana border to take us to Accra. Once we reached the city, it became apparent that he didn’t really know the location of the GILLBT guesthouse where we were to spend the night, and wasn’t exactly open to the directions given by 2 of our number who’d been there 2 weeks earlier! Our border crossing was easier this time, and we discovered why the ground had been so sandy – we were practically on the beach! As well as the coffin showroom, we got to visit a craft centre and the beach the following day (though had to pay to go on it!), and had a wonderful paddle in the cooling waters of the Atlantic. It had been worth doing the drive in one day to have that last relaxing one in Accra, before boarding the plane that night for Nairobi.

Coffins with a difference!

I’ve never considered a coffin showroom as being something that you’d find on the tourist trail, but we were advised to visit one whilst we were in Accra for a day on the way back to Nairobi from Togo. This particular one was a fairly crude showroom, with the finished products on the second floor of a rickety wooden structure overlooking the main road. Choices of coffins available were: a sports car, a Ghana Airline plane, a chicken, a cow, okra, a pineapple, a petrol tanker, …… All very bizarre! Equally bizarre was a funeral procession that we witnessed. A more conventional coffin this time, draped in a Ghana flag, and being borne aloft by a crowd of singing and dancing young people dressed in red (some, it seemed, fairly intoxicated) along the main road. It seemed more like a carnival than a funeral.