......Dharamsala Diary......

Thank You!!

2009-08-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

We have many people to thank for their help during this most beautiful year in our lives. Without their help our journey would not have been such a great and successful one. Both of us agree that the entire experience is just beyond words.

We feel very lucky to have had such a wonderful opportunity, especially after meeting so many people who hardly have enough food to feed their family for the day.

We would like to thank a never-ending list of people who were happy provide us with a bed, advice or suggestions about places they’ve travelled to, and to everyone who has left comments on our blog (especially Miguel, our official fan). We do not know how to repay you for your kindness, and we hope that we can do the same thing with you when you visit us in our tiny Malta.

Finally, we want to thank the many people we met along the way. People everywhere were just incredibly kind and enthusiastic, and helped enrich our trip in so many ways. It was a great privilege for us to meet them and learn so much about their lives, and we thank them for sharing so much with us. We would like to mention a few special ones!

In Kenya thanks to Dr. Haller, Sonal, Florence, Lennox, Micheal Mjomba, Gideon, Maureen, Omari, Mohammed, Hubert and in particular to our Italian friends who are based in Nairobi for their infinite kindness and hospitality - Paolo, Filippo and Miresi.

We would like thank our Ugandan friends at Kyabirwa Primary School especially Moses Owino and his family who had the pleasure to accommodate us at their home. We also would like to show our appreciation to Morence Mpora for having us stay at the orphanage he runs.

We would like to show gratitude to Rebecca Bell and her flatmates, Trudi, Becks, Daniel and his sister Sera, whom we met during our Africa trip, for being so friendly and hospitable towards us in New Zealand. We are really sorry for not having time to visit our Australian friends Bianca, Cameron and Dan in Melbourne and Sydney... don’t worry it will be next time :)

Big thanks to Uncle Manwel, Aunty Phyliss, Sharon and Josh and little Ben for making our Maltese-Australian experience unforgettable.

We also would like to thank our friends in Dharamsala (India) especially sister Tenzin Lladron and all the nuns at Jamyang Choling Institute, Sonam from Lha, and Norbu, Jampa, Tsering and Lhamo.

We cannot forget to mention our friends in the UK, especially Sally and Barry who kept our winter clothes for a whole year at their house, Leo and Esteban who accommodated us during our stay in Oxford, and Aurelie and Nicolas who provided us with lodging when were in Southampton.

And, now that we’re back in our little island Malta, we will thank in advance everyone who will help us with re-entry to a normal life. We suspect it will take a bit of time for us to adjust, but I am sure that our families will do anything to make us feel home.

We would also like to invite to Malta all our friends who have never been here and, to ask the others who have been here already to come back.

We hope you have enjoyed reading our blog as much as we have enjoyed working on it.

2009-07-08T05:32:00.000-07:00

Butter sculpture

Vegetable momos

Indian band playing before wedding

Singing bowl

Walking up to Triund

The peak

Tibetan picnic

Foothills of the Himalayas

Tibetan musical instrument

Lucienne in a Tibetan dance

Jampa

Lucienne's surprise birthday party

Football in India!

Tibetan medicine

Wearing traditional Tibetan attire

Making momos

Golden Temple, Amritsar

Mahabodhi Temple, Bodhgaya, where Buddhist philosophy was conceived

Varanasi

Taking a dip in the sacred Ganges river

Main ghat

Burning ghats, where most of the public cremations occur

Sadu

Daily fire puja to the Ganges

Taj Mahal, Agra

2009-05-25T01:03:00.000-07:00

Our Tibetan english language students

Having a traditional tibetan meal at their apartment

Perfectly parked cow!!

Plumbing indian style!

Tibetan students

During a computer lesson

Initial phase of the sand mandala...

The sand mandala is finished after two weeks

The Mandala is destroyed!

Norbulingka Institute - Opened in 1995 and is run by Tibetan refugees. They opened this institute to preserve the Tibetan culture. Tibetans make wood carvings, metal sculptures and thangka paintings.

Tibetan Geshe

Melting metal for sculpture

Sculpting the head of a Buddha

Monks debating at our monestary

Monks gathered chanting

Prayer Wheels

Incense

After 3 hours waiting for this H.H. Dalai Lama to arrive finally we managed to see him

Dinner with our Japanese and Tibetan friends

Momos

Tibetan calligraphy

Puja Ritual

Preparing butter tea in gigantic pots!

Waiting for the arrival of H.H. Dalai Lama at Jamyang Choling Nunnery

H.H. delivering his speech

2009-04-30T01:38:00.000-07:00

A friend once told me that there is always something curious that makes you very aware that you have arrived in India. In our case, it was nothing spectacular – an hour trip through very congested traffic at 10.30 pm, to get to an alley in Old Delhi where a cow was munching on some food scarps and an old man peeing by the side, just at the entrance of our hostel – if we had not just arrived from super clean and super organised Singapore. Yet we had no culture shock; we felt we needed to adjust more when we arrived to New Zealand from Africa than this time round. We spent a few days in lovely Old Delhi, where the fragrance of incense and fried samosas blends with that of car fumes, cow dung and human urine. What was initially overwhelming was the sheer mass of human bodies and vehicles we had to make our way through to reach any destination, which made distances feel longer than they really were. But you quickly forget about all of this when you sit down to sample vegetable thali, aloo gobi or any other excellent Indian delicacy we had the fortune to taste. Needless to say, these Indian dishes taste much better served at a small, hole in the wall dhaba than at any expensive Indian restaurant back home.

Two things have impressed us so far: the elegance and bright colours of female attire, which is worn even when carrying a sack of stones at a construction site (here women work as much as men!), and the wide availability of books, not just fiction but even heavy philosophical texts, by the side of the road. And we cannot forget to mention the entrepreneurship of some people we encountered– one old man made his living by cleaning the ears of passers-by! He even had a Maltese customer once and showed us his recommendation in Maltese!

Mcleod Ganj

Red Fort, Delhi

Delhi Train Station

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Mcleod Ganj, Upper Dharamsala, our home for the next few months. Few people knew about this little town perched on a ridge between the Kangra and Chamba valleys , until H.H. The Dalai Lama and other Tibetan exiles settled here in 1959.

Reaching this lovely village involved a 10 hour train journey and a 4 hour bus ride to the foothills of the Dhauladhar Range, south of the Himalayas. We are now living in a small room at a Buddhist monastery, which apart from offering a splendid view of the Kangra Valley and the Dhauladhars, allows us to become part of the daily rhythm of the monastery – breakfast bell at 6 am, chanting at 6.30 am, morning recitations, tea at 3.00 pm, debating at 7.00 pm, etc/

To say the truth, coming to Dharamsala was our plan B. Initially we wanted to go to Tibet, but due to political problems that have intensified since the last Olympic games, we had to settle for this tiny village in the north of India. We are not at all sorry to have done so, however, because we are living and working with Tibetan people most of the time, and our room is just opposite the temple and residence of H.H. The Dalai Lama. We have to say that all of this would not have been possible without the kind help of Sister Tenzin, who was our initial contact here.

Nowadays our daily schedule is as follows:

06.30 am - Kora
08.00 am – Teaching English
11.00 am – Buddhist philosophy lesson at the library
1.00 pm – Teaching computing
3.00 pm – Teaching English
4.00 pm – Conversation skills with ex-political prisoners

Our diet consists mainly of Tibetan food, such as momos, thukpa and thentuk, although the odd Indian or Chinese dish does make its way into our menu. We are soon going to start having lunch and dinner with Buddhist nuns at a neighbouring nunnery.

A woman weaving a Tibetan carpet.

Our room at the Monastery....

....and the view from our room.

Monk playing a Tibetan game aimed at improving the mind.

Tibetan orphan at Tibetan Children Village, a project initiated by H.H. The Dalai Lama to take care of refugees' children and orphans that come from Tibet.

Our classroom at the Library where everyday a geshe teaches us Buddhist philosophy.

A musician playing traditional Tibetan music, a commendable effort to keep Tibetan culture alive.

Tibetan prayer flags, a legacy of the Bon religion that predates Buddhism in Tibet and the Himalayas.

Buddhist nunnery just outside of Dharamsala.

Inside the humble dwelling of an old Tibetan refugee.

The Kora

After waking up at 6.30 am we join many Tibetans on their clockwise walk around the temple and residence of H.H. The Dalai Lama. We walk past many engraved stone mantras, prayer flags, until we arrive at the main site. There we turn prayer wheels and listen to monks chanting while we are served with rice and butter tea. We then walk back to the main entrance as the sun is rising. It is so beautiful to join the Tibetans in this daily ritual, which they used to perform at Potala palace in Lhasa, Tibet.

Slates engraved and painted with the 'Om mani padme hum' mantra.

The prayer wheel holds numerous copies of the above mantra inside. Turning the wheel is equivalent to reciting the mantra.

When all the prayers are said, the Tibetans stand one next to the other, sing the beautiful Tibetan national anthem, and throw tsampa (barley flour) into the air. We have not yet managed to come out from the kora not covered in flour!

The boy in the photo is the Panchen Lama, the youngest political prisoner in the world. We attended the ceremony at the main temple to celebrate his 20th birthday. In 1995, H.H. The Dalai Lama identified this boy as the re-incarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama. Three days later China arrested the boy and his whole family, and since then no news have been heard about them – we do not know where they are, whether they are dead or alive. China also put their own 'dummy' Panchen Lama in his place, which is foolish because the Panchem Lama, unlike the Dalai Lama, holds no political power in Tibet. This is just one of the many horrific atrocities being committed by the Chinese in Tibet.

Saturday laundry at Bhagsu, 2 km out of Mcleod Ganj

6619 km of New Zealand

2009-04-03T14:51:00.001-07:00

Routeburn Track

Milford Sound

Gertrude Valley

Kea, Milford

Milford Track

Aoraki (Mt Cook)

Maori marae, Gisborne

Gisborne

Bay of Plenty

Rotorua

Marae, Rotorua

Tongariro Alpine Crossing (volcanic area)

Rabbit shearing (eh?), Waitomo
Tauranga with Trudi

Cathedral Cove, Coromandel

Sand boarding, Oponuni

Australia and New Zealand

2009-02-19T01:29:00.001-08:00

Sky Tower, Auckland

Piha Beach, North Island

Phillip Island, Australia

Twelve Apostles, Australia

Melbourne, Australia

Lucienne and Sharon (cousin)

Maori artefacts, Christchurch, New Zealand

Christchurch Cathedral

Kaikoura

Albatross, Kaikoura

Whale-watching, Kaikoura

Kaikoura coastline

Seal colony, Kaikoura

Nelson Beach, Nelson

Hokitika Gorge, Hokitika

Franz Josef Glacier

Fox Glacier

Pancake Rocks, West Coast

Our home in New Zealand

West Coast

Abel Tasman National Park

On the way to Queenstown

Lucienne in the kitchen

Wanaka

Lake Hawea

Lake Matheson

East Africa in 2 months

2009-01-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

last weeks in Kenya

2008-11-09T07:52:00.000-08:00

hello everyone!

we have not updated our blog for a very long time! we left kenya a month ago and at the moment we are in Uganda (Jinja) and we are living with a local family for some time and we do not have electricity and internet! In Jinja we are volunteering in a primary school teaching orphans maths, science and english. Somehow we managed to find an internet in town and we are updating the pictures only. (some of the pictures are NOT self-explanatory but hopefully we will be updating the blog again in december.)

thanks for your comments :)
take care,
Lucienne and aaron

2008-10-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

Monday 15th September 2008 – Mitedi’s big hole

Mitedi is our favourite community. It is almost entirely run by women, and there is no man to be seen during the day, which is why everything works like clockwork. The school and clinic built by the Haller Foundation are very well maintained. The current project at Mitedi is the construction of a biogas digester, which will provide the premises with electricity (which is not available at any of the communities we visited). The ladies were instructed to dig a 2.1 m deep and 3 m wide hole, and so they did. Aaron needs to go to Mitedi quite often because he is helping with the construction of 2 dams there. As soon as the children of the community stop crying ‘jambo mzungu’, they bring out a ball for a game of football and Aaron joins in. The game normally consists of everybody running after the ball, young and old, girls and boys. Last week we decided to buy them a real ball because their ball consisted of plastic bags tied together with a string. The children were so excited when they realised the ball can actually bounce, but the excitement was short-lived because after less than half an hour the ball had already burst. Nothing beats the plastic ball in the African fields.

We are two weeks into Ramadan, but only today did Mohammed realise, and he decided to start fasting. He can only eat after sunset, it is quite amazing that a man so old still manages to fast for so long. Fasting is generally broken at 6 pm, when you find him sitting in his chair with food, tea and dates at his side, and waiting for Aaron to tell him that is time to start eating.

Saturday 20th September 2008 – The beach clean up

Every year the Haller Foundation organises a clean up of Nyali beach, a few kilometres south of our cottage. We joined Gideon, Jonathan and a large number of school kids this year (we should be ashamed of ourselves as we have never participated in a beach clean up in Malta!). The event was very well organised. We were given gloves and plastic bags to clean the beach, and a t-shirt, bag and pencil as a souvenir. We spent a few hours collecting all types of rubbish, predominantly shoes and polystyrene, which at the end amounted to about 1 ton of waste. Some of the kids danced and acted in front of the mayor of Mombasa, who delivered a speech and handed money to a group of mentally disabled children, an act that we still do not know how to interpret.

Sunday 21st September 2008 - Mombasa

After several attempts we finally made it to the second largest city of Kenya. We took a matatu early in the morning and headed straight to Fort Jesus, which dominates the harbour and is Mombasa’s biggest tourist attraction. The fort was built by the Portuguese in 1593 to control their Swahili colonies, but it changed hands several times in bloody sieges during the following 200 years. We had the whole fort to ourselves, which allowed us to admire the thick coral fortifications, the museum, a whale skeleton (quite random!) and wall paintings. We also managed to walk around Mombasa’s old town, where the houses have ornately carved doors and fretwork balconies, but all this walking made us hungry. Quite unfortunate, as it was still Ramadan and ALL restaurants were closed. Somehow we managed to find a cheap eatery serving a hideous hamburger with half cooked chips, but it went down fine with some weird tasting fanta. Catching a matatu back was easy, getting back home was not. After tackling the heavy traffic in the city centre, the matatu broke down and we had to walk all the way back to the cottage.

Tuesday 23rd September 2008 – The power of ignorance

During our visits to the outreach communities that we carried out with the medical team we realised that people who live in the developed world are not richer because they have more material possessions, but because of the education they get when they are young, the easy access to information that they have and the resulting capacity for good judgement. The people of these communities are illiterate and lack basic education. In comparison to other communities they are privileged to have a doctor and nurse visiting them once a week, but the number of patients has slowly been decreasing because of rumours, which are totally untrue: e.g. the medical team was not treating the patients well or that it was not giving the correct treatment. It is common for girls to have 5 children by the age of 22. Florence the nurse sometimes delivers a talk to the communities, but when the theme is family planning, the community members ask her to stop talking. They do not want to hear about it because they want to continue having as many children as possible.

Another example: a few months ago the government started providing mosquito nets to families in the district of Kilifi to the north, in order to curb malaria, which is a major killer here in Kenya. After a while many people started to return the nets because they said that the nets had bad spirits or that they were talking to them during the night. Others decided to start using the mosquito nets for fishing.

Thursday 25th September 2008 – The fate of Kenyan thieves

On our way back to the office today we saw a naked man, completely covered in mud, walking along the street. We were told that he probably was a thief. As the efficiency of Kenyan police leaves a lot to be desired, Kenyans generally take justice into their own hands. This man was probably caught red-handed, stripped of his clothes and beaten. Some thieves are less fortunate. Last Monday a thief tried to steal a TV from a house in the morning. He was caught in the act by the neighbours who beat him up, tied him and set him on fire. Luckily for him the police arrived in the nick of time and arrested before he burnt to death.

Friday 26th September 2008 – Circumcision and the wedding

The Minister of Health here in Kenya (one of 40 ministers by the way) has recently encouraged men to go for ‘the cut’ to reduce the risks of HIV/AIDS. We have not been able to verify this claim yet, but health clinics all over Kenya are now overcrowded with young men wanting to undergo the operation. In some remote villages, young men in groups go around looking for uncircumcised men and if they manage to find one, they carry out the operation themselves.

Alfred, a 21-year old Luo from Kisumu, came to the Haller Foundation clinic to undergo a circumcision operation. Lennox the doctor asked us to be the official photographers of the event – only in Africa would somebody ask us to do so! So we sat there for about 20 minutes taking photos of Alfred’s bloody private parts whilst he was trying to seduce Florence the nurse and occasionally twitching in pain. Lucienne almost fainted a couple of times. Alfred was lucky to have his operation done at the clinic, as many Kenyans go for group circumcisions where no anaesthesia is administered and where the same knife is used. It turned out that prevention of HIV/AIDS was not the only reason Alfred had this operation. At the end of the operation he claimed that he finally felt like a real man and that his girlfriend would be very proud of him.

A number of European couples like to get married in the bush. On the same day we also had the opportunity to attend a wedding of a British couple who got married at the sundowner at Nguuni sanctuary, with the sunset silhouetting the giraffes, elands and oryx in the background.

Saturday 4th October 2008 – Snorkelling the Mombasa Coral Reef

Two new visitors joined us at the cottage – Urs and Manuela. They are from Switzerland and they will be living with us for a week. They are here on holiday and today we joined them on a snorkelling trip to the Mombasa Marine Reserve. The coral reef is not in the best condition, but the quantity and variety of fish that live there still surprised us – zebra fish, angel fish, eels and many others of which we cannot remember the name. The journey to the reef was also exciting. The means of transport was a wooden boat with a glass bottom, and an engine with a pipe that feeds from a can of fuel. The thin string attached to engine needed to be pulled a number of times before we managed to depart.

Sunday 5th October to Tuesday 7th October 2008– The Shimba Hills and the invisible elephants

Hubert, or Hubi, is a Swiss notary that came to visit his friend Dr. Haller in Kenya. We met him at our cottage when he came to say hello, and we could not refuse his kind invitation to join him for 3 days at his cottage on the Shimba Hills, some 2 hours south of Mombasa.

Today we made an early start, and at 6:30 am we were already on the way in a pick-up truck. The south of Mombasa is separated by an estuary from the mainland, so to get to the other end you need to cross the sea on an old, rusty ferry. Hubi may be one of the kindest people we have met, but at the wheel he is very sharp and determined driver, which is what you need to be here in Kenya if you want to go across Mombasa city. Two hours later we were already at the cottage, which Hubi built a few years ago. It is actually an eco-lodge, because electricity is generated by solar power, rainwater is harvested and the toilets are dry. And it is beautifully designed, with gorgeous views of the Shimba Hills Natural Reserve to the west. Being Swiss, Hubi had everything planned for us. We had coconut to drink and then a lunch with Swiss cheese and sausage. In the afternoon we visited Matanu’s house and his family (one of the Haller Foundation’s employees) and then went for a short hike at the border of the Shimba Hills reserve. Hubi and Aaron managed to spot a couple of elephants through their binoculars, Lucienne could not see a thing.

After a huge breakfast, we joined Ali on 3 hour hike to the Shimba Hills National Reserve. Hubi stayed at the cottage working on his organic farm. Ali is a local who was born and raised in the Shimba Hills, and he knows the park like the back of his hand. He may not be able to read, but we can spot or hear elephants from hundreds of metres away. We made down to the valley bed of the park (which is somewhat illegal) where we discovered some petrified wood, and walked along to try to spot elephants or buffaloes. We get close to a bull elephant, and we could hear him crushing tree branches as he moved through the forest. We decided to run away because it was slightly dangerous, and instead managed to spot baboons, colobus monkeys and sable antelopes. Ali then took us around his village, where children ran towards us and would not leave us alone. We then walked back to the cottage and still Lucienne had not seen an elephant. This evening it was our turn to cook, but before we did so we planted 3 albizia lebbeak and 4 eucalyptus tree seedlings. We hope that they will grow into beautiful trees and that we will still find them here if we ever manage to return.

Tuesday was our last day at the cottage. Feeling sorry that Lucienne had not seen an elephant yet, Hubi drove us to the Mwalunganje Elephant Sanctuary, which is located in the middle of Cha Shimba River valley and is run by a local community. The setting is beautiful, but I have no idea how people can reach it without a 4-wheel drive. The track that meanders across the park area is 30 km long, and after 1 hour we had not managed to spot a single elephant, in spite of the fact that there should 150 of them here. We did manage to spot wild boars, baboons and beautiful birds, however. Lucienne by now had started to think that elephants did not exist. We even stopped at a travellers’ lodge where elephants are not to walk by everyday, but as we had our lunch there was no elephant in sight. As we drove back to the gate, however, we found about 30 elephants walking slowly by the river. A marvelous sight indeed, especially watching the mothers taking care of the young, elephants scratching their back, others covering themselves with soil and dust, and feeling sorry about the emarginated older elephants.

5th - 7th September 2008 - The MAPA project

2008-09-21T23:25:00.000-07:00

The MAPA project (www.mapaproject.org) is an ambitious project supported by Google and Tracks4Africa to map all national parks in the African continent. The data collected during the following two years will be used for conservation-related projects and will be freely available to everybody on GoogleEarth.

We had the pleasure to join our friends Paolo and Filippo on the first expedition of the MAPA project and map the Arabuko Sukoke Forest Reserve, located about one and a half hours north-east of Mombasa.

We should have been picked up on Thursday, and Mohammed had spent most of the morning preparing fried doughnuts for us. This being Africa, Paolo and Filippo picked us up a day late (not their own fault!) so we ended up eating Mohammed's delicious doughnuts in the meantime. Our friends turned up on Friday in their newly-bought, second hand green Land Rover. We dumped our bags in the back of the car and drove on the reently surface road for nearly two hours through Mtwapa and Kilifi until we reached the forest reserve. The best thing about participating in the MAPA project is that you get free entrance and camping in the park! We had to hire Jonathan, however, who was to be our guide during our expedition across the last stretch of coastal forest of the entire East African coast. We set our 2 GPS on and started driving through the forest. Initially it was very exciting, particularly when the road started to get bumpier. We soon realised, however, the driving across a forest also means having to stare at a green wall of trees on either side for hours on end. I have to admit that hiking through the forest, as we occasionally had to do, was much more fun. We stopped at the different junctions, entrances, exits and viewpoints to take waypoints. One of the viewpoints was particularly staggering as it was possible to see the entire extent of the park and the succession of forest type from the coast inland. We were hoping to see the famed wildlife in this park, particularly the forest elephant and the elephant shrew. We only saw elephant poop, however, and lots of it, and (perhaps?) what appeared to be the shadow of an elephant. On the other hand we saw numerous different species of butterflies and birds. At the end we set up the tent on a sandy patch of the park near the entrance, and then headed to Watamu to have dinner in this beautiful restaurant where the tables have their individual white tent. We also tried to find an Italian gelateria but were unsuccessful.

The following morning was devoted to mapping the rest of tracks within the park and we also managed to see a large group of baboons running ahead of us. In the middle of the day we drove to the never-ending, white Turtle beach in Watamu to meet Valeria and Tania, who are friends of Paolo and Filippo. We later drove to Malindi, left our stuff at the Gossip Hotel, had a look at the beach, and paid a visit to the local artisan market, where were encircled by many sellers, all wanting us to have a look at their shop. After an excellent dinner at the 'Old Man and the Sea', where we had crab soup, pumpkin and coconut soup, and kingfish, we joined the crowd of mzungus to a beach party at this beautifully-set bar on Malindi beach. The crowd was small so we had the opportunity to talk to most of the mzungus before getting back to our hostel on a tuk-tuk.

8th September 2008 – Thanks ComputerAid!

The computers have finally arrived, so Lucienne spent most of the morning checking them and setting them up.

We always forget to say that electricity and water are out almost every day, which does limit the amount of work we can do sometimes.

This does not affect Aaron so much, however, particularly as now he is in charge of locating and designing four dams for the communities of Mitedi and Bombo, sponsored by trusts and foundations in the UK, and he spends most of his time on site. When he is not doing this he is measuring trees for a survey of the biofuel plantation.

Lucienne spends more time with the locals so she manages to get a better glimpse of their culture and philosophy of life. One interesting chat was about relationships and marriage. Kenyans believe that a married man cannot stay at home looking after housework while his wife is at work, because his main duty is to earn money. Money plays a major role in a relationship. If both partners work, the man has to earn more than the female; if not she has every right to divorce him.

Another chat was about clothing. Florence (who is Christian) thinks that it is indecent for a Kenyan girl to wear a skirt (not short) with a slit at the back and a sleeveless top. whereas it is acceptable for her if Lucienne (a mzungu) to wear such clothing. She believes that the girl, by doing so, is asking for trouble, and that if she is raped, she is to be blamed, and not the man who raped her.

Saturday 13th September 2008

Today we almost killed Mohammed!

We invited some locals that we work with for dinner – Lennox the doctor, Florence the nurse, Michael the boss, Omari and Mohammad who take care of our cottage, and Gideon, our neighbour. As Kenyans are very conservative about what to eat, we tried to cook something very basic – guacamole as an appetizer, then two types of pasta dishes (bolognese sauce, chicken with broccoli and cream), potato wedges, and a fruit salad for dessert. We spent most of the morning preparing the food. Mohammed was in his best attire, which included a white shirt, cream trousers and a matching hat. He instructed us how to welcome our guests through the veranda and then set on his armchair pretending to read a book, in German, starting from the back!

Our guests were told to come at 7.30 pm, but they arrived a couple of hours later – we are used to African time now! They were initially a bit hesitant about starting to eat the guacamole and the pasta, but by the end of the dinner everybody managed to eat his share of food, despite the absence of ugali, about which these locals are obsessed. We think Mohammed never saw so much food on a table in his life, as he was having seconds of almost everything. At one point, while he was eating his fruit salad with ice cream, he collapsed from his chair with his eyes open. Lennox and Omari grabbed him before he fell to the floor and placed him on a nearby bed. We were afraid it was a stroke or something worse, but then we see that Mohammed was smiling and muttered something to the doctor, and everbody burst out laughing. He told them that he fell asleep on his chair and started dreaming. He said that he had never eaten so much and that he always feels sleepy when he eats a lot!

After Mohammed retired to his room, we drove of to Mtwapa in our hired car. We tried to, actually, because the car ran out of fuel half way there. We tried to push the car as a group of goats watched us with great interest, but the petrol station was too far. Michael and Omari walked to the station and came back with a black plastic bag full of fuel and a plastic bottle, and somehow they managed to fill the car with petrol and restart it.

We finally made it to Kembas disco, where a young deejay was entertaining a crowd of locals. As we were enjoying our Guiness with Coke (that is how Kenyans like their Guiness, I guess because it is quite bitter on its own), sexy Maureen (as introduced by DJ Akrakatabra) came out and started pole dancing. This was no gentlemen's bar, and we learnt that it is quite common for Kenyan bars to have pole dancers. It turned out that sexy Maureen was a bit to chubby for pole dancing, which was quite entertaining for everybody, particularly as the dancer extended her performance to every conceivable space in the bar. Sexy Maureen was followed by sexy Terry, sexy Melissa and sexy Joanna, and the trend was for the girls to be slimmer and better dancers, which was quite entertaining for the boys.

Before sexy Maureen came out for her second performance we headed to the Black Havana, where we were the only 2 mzungus on the dancefloor and had a great time dancing (or trying to) to the tune of Congolese music.

Jambos and mambas!

2008-09-08T03:59:00.000-07:00

Have you ever tasted crocodile meat (mamba)?

We could not think of a better way to end a crazy day if not by cooking this delicacy, which the locals marinade in lemon juice, garlic, ginger, turmeric and coriander overnight. Its texture is tough and it tastes something in between chicken and fish, but we enjoyed it thoroughly.

Our Saturday started early in the morning. Gideon dropped us at Nguuni while he and Michael met the community of Kimbunga. We spent most of the morning walking around the sanctuary and birdwatching. After that Gideon and Michael picked us up and we drove to Bombo, a new community that has asked the help of the Haller Foundation to provide an adequate and continuous source of fresh water. We arrived when they were having a meeting, so the community leader showed us around the rice fields, cashew nut trees, coconut plantations, indigenous cattle, maize fields, and then we went to inspect the location of the proposed dams. Later Gideon drove us to Kiembeni, where we got off the truck and followed Michael in an alley flooded with rainwater. I had never noticed this alley, but inside there was a whole neighbourhood of shops and houses, including Michael's. He lives with his wife and 3 children (Peter, Beatrice and Tina) in a small house that includes a tiny living room, kitchen and shared courtyard and bathroom. The place is rundown and really disorganised, but it has its charm. The highlight of our visit was when Michael offered us a coke and he loaded a DVD of Westlife playing some old songs. After finishing our drink we got on the first matatu of the day. The driving was not too bad. The dispatcher was shouting the destination of the matatu every few seconds and getting off the minivan every hundred metres to lure potential customers. At one point the traffic was blocked and the driver tried to cut across the central strip. It was at this point that we decided it was time to take the next matatu, which would take us to the annual fair of Mombasa. This fair is the second largest in Kenya and the theme for this year was 'Empowering the people with agri-business'. The second matatu driver was a bit more careless but we managed to make it to the entrance in one piece. We managed to pay the student rate rather than the muzungu (white) rate, and when we handed our ticket to the doorman this was torn apart and thrown on the floor.

What awaited us was a microcosm of Kenya. The fair included outdoor stands, not just from agricultural businesses, but also from telephony, petroleum and many other companies. The stands were simple – hand written posters, faded photographs, and few exhibits. Some of the people in charge of the stands had no idea what they were talking about – a person tried to convince us that one species of shrimp could transform into a telapia fish. Some of the exhibits were really elementary, showing, for example, that maize can be turned into oil. The Haller Foundation had a small stand showing the work it does with marine turtles. It was during this fair, and not during my visits to the poor communities on the outskirts of Mombasa, that it struck me that Kenya is still a developing country. As for many developing countries, the heads of state are adored, and the portrait of President Kibiki was to be found everywhere. The fair was well attended, despite this being its last day. Whilst vans were trying to make their way through the walking crowds, women in burkas squeezed past girls in high heels. Having muzungus interested in your stand is quite an honour it seems, and at one point a stand owner was so proud he was discussing Kenyan culture with us that he wanted to take a photo with us with his stand. Here in Kenya, the current trend is for companies to set up a van pumping out loud dance music and let children have a go dancing to the tune. We saw at least 3 vans doing this. What is amazing is the ubiquitous chaos and confusion, even if the task is as simple as running a bar selling Coca Cola. I really admired the sparkle in Michael's eyes when he saw the train and the luna park. In defiance of all health and safety regulations, kids were being hurled at an excessive speed at 4 metres height on a merry go round.

At the end we walked back to the centre of Mombasa and caught a matatu back to Severin. He was another crazy driver – combine that with no lights in the streets, careless pedestrians crossing, overtaking cars (from both sides), sudden breaking to pick up passengers – and one can explain the life expectancy of 47 years for this country. Michael was so kind to accompany us all the way to the cottage and then catch a matatu back to his house.

The Kimbunga community

On the previous Saturday, We spent the morning with Gideon and Michael the boss at the Kimbunga community centre. We met with the newly elected committee and a number of locals. We sat on benches made out of tree trunks in the shadow of a tree. Despite the setting, the meeting was very formal. The committee members came in their best attire, a prayer was said at the beginning and the chairman made a speech about serious matters for a long while. At least that is what we think because they spoke in Swahili and only occasionally they translated their thoughts for us. At the end the locals were very keen to have their photo taken. We then walked all together to the fields so that the people could explain to Aaron what soil erosion problems they have. We also had a look at a number of dams that provide the locals with the only constant source of water. Aaron's job in the next few months will be to identify the ideal location of five new dams that the Haller Foundation has just obtained funding to build. We went through some of the very poor dwellings of this 1600 people community. The houses are spread out over the hills and we had to walk a long way to reach the highest of these dwellings, where a group of locals were having a break from the work in the field and enjoying a coconut alcoholic brew. From these hills we could see the city of Mombasa clearly; the aim of the committee is to turn the area into a picnic park that could provide some income to the people.

At the end of our visit we stopped at the shamba to collect the most beautiful aubergines and papayas. We had to wait for Chai to milk the cow so that we could get our weekly litre of fresh milk. In the evening we went to Yamas bar on the beach close to our cottage with Omari, where we enjoyed a bottle of Tusker, the local brew, under the palm trees in the company of a few curious crabs.

Daily life

Inevitably a routine had to set in our daily life at Bamburi. We wake up early in the morning, prepare lunch while boiling water for the evening, try to decipher what Mohammed is mumbling in broken English and Swahili, cycle to the office through the forest and the shamba, go past children screaming 'Hello how are you?', cycle past the horny donkey with his two mistresses, try to avoid hitting the monkeys in the middle of the road and spend a long time greeting all the people who work at the office. This week Lucienne has spent most of the week teaching at the Nguuni Sanctuary whereas Aaron was busy writing up a report on measures of soil conservation and rainwater harvesting for the community of Kimbunga. In the evening we stop at the farm to buy fruit, vegetables and milk, cycle back through the forest and go for a walk along the beach before cooking dinner. When we finish cooking Mohammed comes into the kitchen and tells us that our food is smelling really good, and we end up giving him some our food. For dessert we have mangoes or papayas, to which we have become addicted.

Despite our allergy to routine, we have to admit that it was beneficial to us because it has slowed our pace and allowed us a better insight into the daily life and psyche of the local people.

We know that this will sound cliche', but despite being poor, these people are always smiling, polite, kind and helpful. Even the annoying beach boys, who do not leave us alone for a second when we go to the beach, have their own polite way of trying to convince us to buy their merchandise or book a safari. The pace of life is very slow and relaxed. This laid back approach has unfortunately permeated into other aspects of life where it has created disturbances or even dangers. Just look at the crazy driving on the Kenyan roads, where overtaking takes place on both sides of the lane. Or the large volumes of rubbish thrown on the side of the streets, which is collected by a tractor once in a while, and which provides the feeding grounds for goats and chickens alike.

There are the very rich and the very poor in Kenya. The Indian community constitutes the majority of the upper class, and the locals do their best to satisfy their culinary needs - both at restaurants and in the supermarkets, one can find numerous Indian delicacies and ingredients. Few people are educated and fewer have a car, but the people who have received an education, or have had the possibility to travel abroad, are very intelligent. What amazes us is their approach to difficulties and life in general. We have two cyclists collide frontally and a cyclist bump into a parked car. In Malta this would have been accompanied by a litany of swearing and cursing. Here in Kenya, the people just laughed at each other!

P.S.: Thanks for all your beautiful comments, keep them coming!

16th August 2008 - First time south of the Equator!

2008-08-24T01:25:00.000-07:00

Grey skies, large boulders on the side of the road, the lack of pavements, the crazy traffic, large storks flying in between electricity poles....welcome to Africa. And the odour of course, a combination of vegetation, pollution, human ... There is something about the most dangerous city in Africa that made us feel immediately at home. Karis the taxi driver of course was not waiting for us at the airport, so after about an hour and a half saying 'no, asante' to the many other taxi drivers and trying to get in contact with Miresi, we managed not to get overcharged and be taken to the Nakumat Westgate shopping store by a friendly taxi driver. We got our first glimpse of Nairobi whilst swerving in between both slow and fast cars, matatus, lorries, taxies, etc. The city initially looked rundown, but as we approached the centre and north-west area, skyscrapers, monuments and large gardens started to appear. This is the richer section of the city, close to the headquarters of the UN and the residential area of its employees. We stopped at the shopping centre to get something to eat and buy a mobile sim card. We also had a look at the shops and tried to explain where Malta is innumerable times to the friendly shop owners. The shopping centre is heavily guarded and the customers were predominantly white and Indian. Miresi came to pick us up with her jeep and on the way we saw a guy with blood on his face, being held at gun point by a police officer. To further remind us about the security problems of this city, Miresi's house was in a guarded compound with barbed wire on the walls, and the doors and windows of her house had metal bars.

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After recovering some lost sleep, we spent most of the afternoon walking around the Westlands area and buying food. Bright red soil, fragments of forest in between roads and buildings that are used by some people to grow bamboo, which is cut and shaped into different forms of furniture. Beggers. Matatus passing by at break neck speed. And security stickers everywhere. We managed to visit another shopping centre, where the electricity went off a couple of times. In the evening we helped Miresi make dinner. She taught Lucienne how to make guacamole and myself how to peel pineapple and mango properly. Paolo and Filippo finally joined us with their 2 Italian friends, Erica and Annarosa – they had just returned from a safari in the north of Nairobi. 3 more Italian friends joined us later. all of whom work or had worked with Italian NGOs in Africa: Erica and Annarosa in Benin, Paola in Somalia. It amazed us how Paola talked nonchalantly about the dangers she and her staff faced daily in Somalia, yet her willingness and determination to return to this country have never been undeterred.

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In the afternoon, a friend of Karis the taxi driver picked us up and drove through the crazy rush hour traffic of Nairobi to take us to train station. We picked our tickets and waited at the station until our old train slowly made its way to our platform. Our cabin was comfortable, with a leather sofa, a wardrobe and a wash basin. The train departed 45 minutes late, and we were called for dinner with a chime at 8.30. For our colonial style, 'silver service' meal we were joined by Maurizio, an Italian printer who lives in Germany and who is travelling from Cairo to Cape Town in 3 months, and an Oxford alumni who was taking a 5 week break in East Africa before starting his new job in the Middle East. We had vegetable soup, fried fish and then rice with a vegetable stew. For dessert we had the tiniest piece of cake. After dinner we went back to the cabin to try to catch some sleep in between the continuous jittering of the train and the sudden accelerations at the numerous stops along the way. Aaron managed to wake up at 5 am to catch a glimpse of Tsavo National Park in the dark. We had English breakfast with Maurizio and then spent most of the morning waving at the numerous children greeting us at the sides of the railway. On the way we saw some beautiful hills and lots of small, shanty villages with houses made out of mud bricks and sticks. We arrived at Mombasa at noon and we were picked up by Philip, who took us to Nakumat and then to the office of the Baobab Trust. There we were greeted by Sonal and then we went to Jongolulu Cottage. Mohammed, Omari and the two guard dogs greeted us at our cottage, which consists of a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, veranda and large garden. Omari has just started to work as a gardener/caretaker 3 months ago, whereas Mohammed, an old Zanzibari who has been in Kenya illegally for years, who is alone in this world, and who only speaks Swahili and broken English. He takes his job very seriously and admonished Aaron about bringing beach boys back into the house at night several times. We went to have a look at the beach some metres away from our house with Omari, and we were stopped a couple of times by the beach boys. A coral reef about 300 m away from the beach causes the waves to break in a beautiful pattern, and the colour of the sea is almost yellow in places. A number of huge villas are located at the border of the beach, including Dr. Haller's. We also saw a couple of monkeys on our way back to the cottage. Later on, Omari accompanied us to Shanzu, a small town nearby, where we bought some fresh fruit and vegetables. At night, a guard with a bow and arrow guarded our cottage as we slept under the mosquito nets.

Ali the driver and Florence the nurse picked us up in the morning and we went to the Nguni Sanctuary. There we met Michael the bird expert and Michael the boss, who showed us around the sanctuary – biofuel plantations, quarry with fossils, wetlands with birds (we saw a kingfisher, Egyptian geese and river birds building nests before the mating season), ostriches, oryx, and giraffes at very close proximity. We also saw an eagle owl in captivity swallowing an entire bird! Michael took us for lunch at a corner makeshift restaurant and we had chapati with beans and mchicha. In the afternoon we went back to the office to meet Dr. Haller and discuss the projects that we will be working on. He then took us to the demonstration farm (shamba) to show us the work they are doing there, in particular to teach farmers about composting, organic farming, biogas production, irrigation, using fish for fertilising water, and using tobacco to repel pests, as an example. One of the projects tries to show how a family can survive on a farm 1000 metres squared in area, which Dr. Haller predicts will be the average size of Kenyan farms in the near future. We then went through the famous rehabilitated forest. Bamburi Cement has quarried the coralline limestone from this large extent of land a couple of decades ago, and Dr. Haller managed to rehabilitate it into a dense, mixed forest. It is amazing how in such a short time, large trees were able to grow and such a thick soil had developed. It all started with casuarina, and now the landscape consists of a green, lush forest cover with lakes, hills, birds and monkeys. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Haller picked us up and we did some serious offroading on the muddy slopes outside of Nguni Sanctuary to reach the community of Kimbunga. We were joined by Gideon, who will be our neighbour for the rest of our time here. Gideon is a retired wildlife conservation manager from a village near Lake Victoria who has recently joined the Haller Foundation. The people at Kimbunga are the poorest of the poor in this part of Kenya. Rubbish is thrown in the middle of the street, and the people have occupied land that was owned by Arab landlords. They suffer malaria in the first half of the year, and respiratory problems in the latter part of the year. They subsist on the few agricultural products they produce. Their fields are afflicted by soil erosion. A small school housed a group of children coming from the villages in the Kimbunga community, and these were given something to eat by the Haller Foundation, which might well be the only meal they will have that day. The Foundation is also supporting the communities with building a clinic and providing free medical services once a week, initiating rainwater harvesting projects, etc., but the attitude of the people surprised us. They expected the Foundation to do all the work, and they did not do any of the work they were told to do weeks previously. We spent the afternoon working at the office and we were finally given the bikes we were promised, so we could go to Nakumat and get some food and things, and then cycle back to the cottage through the forest. Aaron had his first swim in the Indian Ocean whist Lucienne was reading a book on the beach.