The ARK Shamba - Farming God's Way

A shamba is a small plot of land that serves as a family farm, usually growing staple foods like maize and beans that the family can eat and sell. A Rocha Kenya has recently acquired a shamba near the town of Gede, which is meant to function as a demonstration plot for a method of conservation agriculture developed specifically for Africa, called "Farming God's Way."

Basically the method consists of modeling a farm after a forest, meaning no tilling, high levels of nutrient cycling, leaf litter/mulch, and biodiversity (crop rotation). But it puts a lot of emphasis on the spiritual aspects of farming as taught in the Bible: acknowledging God and God alone, tithing, praying over the land, etc. It's a pretty neat program and I'm enjoying learning more about it through our weekly monday afternoon workshops/bible studies.

Recently I got to visit our shamba with a couple of Islamic teachers who are interested in this method of Farming God's Way.

It was great to talk to our muslim brothers about creation care and the transforming power of combining Biblical, spiritual truth with practical, scientific methods of improving land use and thus crop yield and overall quality of life. 

The plot also houses our native plant seed bank and nursery where we grow native trees and shrubs and educate local families about the importance of planting these native species on their land as an investment for the future instead of relying on the protected forest land for their timber needs. Our ASSETS families especially are expected to replant some of their land with these seedlings.

We are currently in the second year of farming this plot according to the farming God's way methods and things are going well, our maize is already very tall and producing tassels. Next year they hope to be able to hold training events on site, spreading the wisdom to the surrounding community about the importance of putting God first in your work. Lets pray that these efforts are able to bless the community and show God's glory for many years to come. 

Counting birds at Mida Creek...and other adventures

Mida Creek (mee-dah, not my-dah) is the large tidal mangrove area which opens into the sea just a 30 minute walk south of our Mwamba and then circles north, so that where we are is almost a peninsula of land bordered on the east by the Indian Ocean and on the west by Mida Creek with the SW corner touching the mouth of the creek.

Why should you care about Mida Creek? Because birds love it. Thus, birders love it. For this reason, on Saturday morning I found myself wading through the mud flats, following our birders, who were of course following birds. I saw the famous crab plover, which aggregates in this region in higher numbers than anywhere else in the world, several greater flamingos, and as scribe (again), I wrote down many names that I didn't know and don't remember. In total I think I recorded over 400 birds.

With the work over, we packed up our books and scopes and went to explore the boardwalk. Like the tree platform at the Gede ruins, the Mida Creek boardwalk was constructed by ARocha Kenya in order to benefit the ASSETS program (quick refresher: ASSETS encourages conservation of the Arabuko-Sokoke forest by paying school fees for local children (through eco-tourism) in exchange for agreements from families to not cut trees in the forest, etc.).

This lovely plaque explains the ASSETS program

It's a pretty great boardwalk. It's 260 meters long and in constant need of repair. A thorough renovation is in progress, but for now It's wonderfully swingy and askew, with some boards broken or loose or missing. It's truly an adventure to cross it.

no one has fallen through...yet!

On the walk, I met a lovely lizard friend.

They also have mangrove tree nursery at the creek, run by a local woman's group!

In other news, I met a giant snail.

And had to wonder why there we no horror movies about giant snails taking over cities. We have giant spiders, reptiles, monkeys, even giant swarms of birds, but no snails? Look at this picture and tell me it wouldn't be horrifying:

I'm selling this movie idea. I'm thinking, "Snails take over Manhattan" or "People-Eating Escargot," set in Paris. Winner? I think so. Coming soon to a theater near you. 

Weavers Galore

Turtle Bay Beach Club is one of three big, fancy resorts that sit in a row at the North end of the marine park. Tuesday I discovered that not only does it attract flocks of Italians on holiday, it also is home to flocks of African Golden and Golden Palm Weavers (birds).

The resort is closed for the season so we were able to pack up our team of eager volunteers and research staff, a mist net, and every bird bag we could find and take over their garden area for an evening.

The pond in the garden courtyard area of Turtle Bay, otherwise known as the home of the Weavers. 

The trees/shrubs/bushes are full of their cool little nests dangling precariously from the tips of branches. 

Can you believe a little bird built this? I have opposable thumbs and I don't think I could have built it.

It's always funny watching birds get caught in a mist net. Against a backdrop of foliage the fine mesh disappears and even we forget where it is exactly in the expanse between its two support poles. Birds fly leisurely by and then suddenly stop and fall mid-air, hanging suspended in a pocket of net. Others come in so fast that they stretch the net and get flung backwards by the elasticity. After a while the entire expanse of the net was dotted with yellow, orange, and green birds, struggling to understand how they ended up in such an awkward and precarious position.

Once we filled all of our bird bags, we crammed ourselves back in the car. And I mean crammed. 9 people + 45 birds in bags strung across two bamboo poles = a very full car.

Our cozy backseat. People are a little tired and hungry...and squished!

Back at Mwamba, ringing commenced.

I had received a crash course in recording bird ringing data at Turtle Bay, so back at home I was made designated scribe. Having three people tell me a variety of numbers and measurements and comments for each of their birds, all at the same time, having to get every number right, remember which line I'm on, and whose voice goes with which initials, I definitely had Starbucks morning rush flashbacks. At least this time I didn't have to run around with hot coffee, dodge co-workers, and try not to slip on spilled milk too...

Taking down some measurements from Silas, one of the research team members. 

Our birds.

Andrew examining flight feather molt on a young African Golden Weaver

45 birds later, I had been bitten and scratched by both African Golden Weavers and Golden Palm Weavers, learned to tell the difference between them (males and females) and got an introduction to bird aging, measuring, etc. All in all, a very successful, enjoyable evening :)

A Rainy Walk in the Woods

On Tuesday this week I was able to join the bird-watching crew with several other volunteers on an expedition through the Arabuko-Sokoke National Forest Reserve in search of possible nesting sites for the rare, endemic Clark’s Weaver. The first nest was found just this past year, I believe, after scientists had searched for nearly 20 years. More recently, the first known roosting site was found just a week or two ago, right on the edge of the forest. It’s a hot time for Clark’s Weavers, apparently.

After cancelling the first scheduled hike due to rain, and then losing power to flooding at the power station (the entire North Coast area of Kenya was out of power for almost 36 hours), we were told that this hike would take place rain or shine. So at 7:30am I filled up on chai and mandaazi (sort of unsweet donuts? More like little fried dough bits. Some are better than others.) and packed my backpack with a raincoat and waterbottle. Everything was looking clear and promising…

There were too many of us to fit into the old landcruiser, so we had to take the big old pick-up truck (affectionately known as “kiboko” or hippo). We piled into the bed and just as we were about to pull out, it started drizzling. Someone ran and got us an old canvas tarp for rainproofing, so as the rain got harder, we huddled underneath it like a load of refugees. I felt like we were about to be smuggled across the border!

Driving to the forest (there are people under that tarp)

See? 

We stopped at a gas station on the way and when we all emerged, it was obvious from the looks on peoples faces that the last thing they were expecting was for a group of wet wazungu (white people) to pop out from under a tarp in the back of a pick up truck. A similar thing happened when we pulled up to the gate at the forest. There the ranger watched us materialize and then exclaimed, “I thought you were luggage!”

Even with a tarp covering, wearing raincoats, we somehow managed to get soaked through before we ever got out of the car.

We were entering a part of the forest that tourists never came to, so it was very overgrown and not groomed at all. We had to clear a couple of small branches and trees from the road, but when we came to two impassable blockages in a row, we all voted for leaving the car and walking rather than try our luck with a panga (machete).

Hauling trees off of the road...in the rain. 

Walking through the woods in a downpour is just a ridiculous experience. I couldn’t help but laugh a couple of times at the ridiculousness of it. But the rain only kept up for the first hour or so of the hike. Then as the birds started to sing and the sun came out, so did the butterflies and it was absolutely gorgeous.

This forest was unlike anything I have ever seen before. With the rainy season, mosses and a huge variety of mushrooms had popped out of what was dry sand only weeks before. But at the same time we passed aloe-like succulents and spiky palm shrubs and bromeliads. All this while fighting our way through mangrove trees and random thorny vines, walking on white sandy soil.

an Alice in Wonderland worthy mushroom. I kept expecting a hookah-smoking caterpillar to crawl out.

Not flowers - mushrooms!! crazy, right?

Several times we came across fresh tracks of elephants and buffalo. We even found some nice fresh piles of elephant poo, which the dung beetles were making good use of. Sadly, no large herbivores came crashing into view. Although a couple of elephant shrews did flee from us in the undergrowth a few times.. We were also screamed at by a group of baboons, but they were pretty far away.

A dung beetle doing it's thing...with elephant dung. 

a cool toad that Colin described as a "telephone frog" based on its call. 

Do you see the horrifyingly large Golden Orb Web Spider??

After over 18 kilometers and 5 hours, we made it back to the car – starving, damp, and bedraggled. When I peeled off my wet, muddy shoes and socks, my feet looked like zombies. It was weird. I took a picture, but it might be a bit much to showcase my rotting forest feet on my blog…

Part of the group, post-hike, in our truck bed. We're definitely ready to get back for lunch!

After a 3:45 lunch and a change of clothes, I collapsed in bed and had to force myself to get up after an hour. For all of the exhaustion (and the fact that my legs will be sore for a while since they’re not getting any break this week, with a 30 minute walk to and from my tidepool sites), it was a really nice hike and I really enjoyed getting to see a new part of the area and an entirely new ecosystem.

I can honestly say I have never experienced anything like that before in my life. 

A picture of our truck, laden with volunteers, in front of a bank on our way back. We had too much fun with the mirrored windows. 

Gede Adventure

On Tuesday we had a great snorkel bleaching survey experience (briefly interrupted when we realized the make-shift anchor had come untied and the boat was drifting steadily away), accompanied by 4 missionary teachers who are working for a year in Korr, northern Kenya. But after 3 hours on the water we thought we deserved a bit of a treat, so after lunch we organized a trip to Gede.

The Gede ruins are what is left over from a very very old city of Arab traders. Most of the walls have crumbled, but much of the old mosque and the palace still remain. It’s funny walking around because the people who discovered them named the rooms for what artifacts they found in each so there are places called “room of the cowries,” “room of the venetian bead,” “room of the Chinese cash,” “room of the cistern,” and my favorite, “tomb of the tombstone.” 

We had a great time walking around, looking down wells, looking through windows and archways, and trying to swing Indiana Jones style on vines. Really the whole thing reminded me of that scene where Indie is camping out in some ruins and has to fight off those horrifying little natives/demons/whatevers. I wouldn’t want to spend the night in Gede. Especially since all of the locals believe that it’s haunted! 

Quite a nice nook for an entertainment center, we thought!

Peek-a-boo!

The men in the men's court of the palace

The women in the (much smaller) women's court.

One of the cool things about the ruins is that ARocha has a tree house there. Well it’s actually for the ASSETS program, which works with local communities to send children through school and encourages them to make careers so that they can give back to the community and work to conserve the forest instead of depending on it for survival. One of my friends here, named Isaac, is an ASSETS graduate who has been working as a guide at the ruins tree house to raise money for the program. It was fun to visit him and get his full speech and tour. And it was a pretty awesome treehouse in a Baobab tree. I would totally stretch a hammock between branches and live quite happily up there…if it wasn’t built in a haunted city of ruins…

Epic Baobab treehouse.

Isaac and I in the treehouse (he has a bit of a crush)

 A great time was had by all and we topped it off with a trip to an Italian ice cream shop, which was absolute heaven. I’m not sure ice cream has ever tasted so good.

A study in patience...and perseverance

This week I started in on what will be my main project here in Watamu - tidepool fish surveys.

Welcome to my Office! 

Now I know what you're thinking and yes I'm still a diver who is crazy about benthos (coral and algae), but with the SE monsoon stirring up the water and making things quite rough it is a challenge to get any meaningful work done most days on the reef. I will still be making some forays into the lagoon in an attempt to do an informal survey of macroalgae as well.

I remember once watching a behind the scenes special about making the "birds of paradise" episode of Planet Earth (a stunning show my best friend and I would watch regularly during high school). Basically these cameramen constructed camouflaged "blinds" where they stayed for days just watching and waiting to catch the mating dances of these birds. It's their patience and dedication I have been trying to channel this week.

Yesterday was the full moon, meaning that we've been having lovely low spring tides around mid-morning for the past few days. Since Wednesday I have been starting early, packing a snack, and making the half hour walk down the beach to the most productive patch of tidepools (which ironically happens to be right in front of the three main resorts of Watamu). There, armed with a UV protective rashguard and digital underwater camera, I have systematically stalked tiny fish.

I feel like an ibis or heron walking with slow, long steps, stopping abruptly, and moving on until I find a perfect pool or a fish I haven't seen before, or one I haven't managed a good picture of yet. Then I slowly slowly lower myself while simultaneously raising my camera. I attempt to place the lens of the camera beneath the surface of the water and take a decent picture before the fish disappears with a flick of a tail and small poof of sand. Other times I feel more like the videographers I mentioned earlier. I pick a spot, get comfortable (as much as possible - some pools have required some very interesting yoga-worthy poses), place my camera on the sand, and wait - finger on the shutter button.

With the tidepool area being right in front of the resort, it is very much beach boy territory. And by beach boy I do not mean Californian musician capable of great harmony - I mean Kenyan desperately trying to get money out of tourists any way possible. I have been offered snorkeling tours, getting my picture with a moray, kikois, bracelets, and carved key-chains to name a few. It's usually pretty easy to dismiss them with simple polite conversation, especially after I make it clear that I am not a tourist on holiday. Sometimes I wonder what they think about me - wandering the tidepools, refusing snorkeling tours, insisting that I'm doing a scientific study, when all they see me doing is hunching in awkward positions over small pools (or sometimes crawling through larger ones) for long periods of time. Just another eccentric mzungu?

After three days at these northern tidepools I think I have captured images (some rather blurry) of all of the fish species that I have seen, though I think there might be more I haven't seen yet. Tomorrow at the lowest tide of the week I will head south to another smaller, deeper patch of tidepools. I'm excited to see if I can find any new species there.

Make Hay When The Sun Shines

Or rather, bring in your washing while the sun shines – lesson one of the rainy season.

It has rained every day for the past three days (mostly at night), so I think it’s safe to say that the rains have started in earnest. And it is mercifully cooler as well. The children run around in fleece vests and jackets when it’s raining while I wear my shorts and t-shirts and rejoice in the fact that I’m not sweating!

Tragically though, this also means that all of my swimming costumes have been continually wet for the past three days.

It didn’t rain last night, so this morning after breakfast I checked on my kangas (wonderful multi-tasking pieces of cloth that I have been making heavy use of – hence the reason both pieces were hanging to dry) and they were just the tiniest bit damp. I thought, “hmm, I could take these off, but I would like it if they got a little more dry so that they don’t start smelling damp after I fold them,” so I left them. One hour later it started to rain and it has been raining more or less all day. Needless to say they are now soaked. The moral of this story, once again, is: take in your washing while the sun shines.

And drink chai when it doesn’t :) 

A Ray of Hope - Community-Run Conservation

Today I was able to travel a little ways south to Kuruwitu, a small village that happens to own and operate the first community-initiated marine park in Kenya.

The park is accessible by a small strip of land between huge, gated mzungu (white person) houses. There they have a small booking office, a bathroom, store room, and changing room as well as a small private beach area. Of course the main attraction is the 1km stretch of protected reef where the fish abundance and diversity is pretty impressive, especially considering that many of fish I saw were juveniles. Triggerfish, batfish, parrotfish, damselfish, butterflyfish, pufferfish, just to name a few. Plus 4 fat octopus!

Do you see the giant pufferfish? 

While we were walking out through the lagoon for our second snorkel I asked our guide, John, to tell us a little more about the park. The more I heard the more impressed I was.
The story went pretty much like this:

"When our grandfathers lived here there were many many fish and everyone could fish and make a living, because they used good fishing gears (methods). But now the grandsons, they use fishing nets with small eyes (holes) which take everything, even the very small fish. And soon there are not enough fish for us to make a living anymore. So we did research and learned about closing areas like this. The fishermen came together and said, lets do a trial: we will close this area for 6 months, and then see what happens. But after just two months, the scientists doing research here said the area was already getting better. And the homeowners saw that we were doing good things and gave us donations. This let us buy bigger boats to fish out past the reef instead of in here, in the breeding grounds. So after the six months, the fishermen got back together and decided to make this area a closed marine park."

There are tons of triggerfish - which is funny because John told us that 6 years ago there were none, but that they bought 1 pair of fish up the coast - a male and female, brought them here, and they (very) successfully populated the lagoon!

The area was made a "no-take zone" in 2006 which means no fishing or collection of any kind within the park, and also puts a ban on walking across that area. John said that no one in the area was allowed to buy or sell shells or other curio products, which is awesome, as this is often a destructive source of income for coastal peoples.

The coolest thing about this park is that the fishermen themselves saw the need for conservation and took it upon themselves to make it happen. John even told me that at a recent meeting they agreed that the park was doing good things for the area and the fisheries and wanted to expand the range of the park to be 3km of shoreline instead of 1. Following their example, 6 other community-initiated parks have now been established in Kenya and this park continues to offer training to locals and fishermen from other parts of the coast.

For such a shallow area, the corals are pretty prolific. John says that 6 years ago, you wouldn't have seen any of them.  I would like to read some studies to see how true that is...but I'm sure the closing has helped, especially with trampling. 

 All in all, I was very impressed by the Kuruwitu Marine Park and even more so by its history. I think that the existence of community-initiated/run conservation groups like this is a shining ray of hope for developing area coastal ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.

An Ode to Chai

The world is full of beverages that people like to drink

But even all the hot ones are not made equal, I should think.

Coffee is a drink which I very often take.

It's bitter rich aroma throws my eyelids wide awake. 

Early mornings in Seattle I could seldom function

Without a steamy cup of this caffeinated production.

Few things are as pleasing as sitting by a teapot.

Black tea, green tea, white tea, I like them all a lot. 

Sipping slowly at a delicate brew is very comforting

Being warmed from the inside out makes my soul to sing.

On a cool, crisp autumn, a cider can't be beat.

Such a delicate balance of refreshing, spicy, and sweet.

Hot chocolate can be nice after playing in the snow

Otherwise I often think it is really just so-so.

You may now think that I have exhausted the drinks

which are warm and non-alcoholic. 

But I tell you now, and do not lie:

You have not lived if you have not had chai.

Oh chai, what a beverage, crafted of tea and milk

with just a touch of sugar, you taste as smooth as silk.

Rich and yet so delicate, such a lovely reddish-brown,

If there were a king of the hot drinks, you would wear the crown.

I admit I was not converted at the very first taste,

But now I count the hours and run to you with haste.

You make waking up in Africa such a lovely task

knowing that when I rise, in your flavour I can bask.

And in the afternoon as my eyelids grow so heavy,

you strengthen and uplift me, make me strong like a chevy.

So thank you, lovely chai for all that you do.

I say it now, loud and proud: Chai, I love you!