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!

Sunset over Watamu

Yesterday (Saturday) night, Benjo took Robin and I to a great spot on the cliffs to watch the sunset.

This required us to take my first tuk-tuk ride. A tuk-tuk is a sort of motorized pedi-cab, but resembles a mythological creature with the front parts of an old motorcycle, the feet of a tricycle, and the body of a square wheelbarrow, with a bench. It was a bumpy ride, especially up and down the drive of our “plot 28,” which only has pavement in two tracks and rocks in the middle.

We voyaged deep into the heart of Italian Watamu (Italians are by far the most common tourists) to a small path leading between two construction sites. When we got to the top we saw this:

The cliffs are old old coral rock, so they’re very porous and jagged and actually really resemble basalt (lava rock). There were great places where the waves crashed under ledges of this rock forming blowholes:

It was just spectacular. We followed the cliffs around to get to a spot where we could look west, towards the sunset. It was well worth it.

It was a great adventure and a nice send-off for Benjo who has again changed his mind and will be leaving for the UK tomorrow for three weeks.

My new digs

I thought you would all like to see where I am living now so, here it is:

This is the building where I live. The far left door is the toilet, then my door, the next room is Grace’s, a Kenyan general volunteer who is studying tourism operations at University currently. The green door on the right is the shower.

This is my room. Currently I do not have a roommate, which is really nice. When another female volunteer comes she will live with me. Until then, freedom! It’s actually really good that I have a place where I know I can go, shut the door, turn on the fan, and have a moment to myself. I really needed it the first couple of days.

This is my bed, covered with a lovely kikoi bedspread. If I’m hanging out on my bed during the day (naptime), I tie up the mozzie net on one side to let the fan in better. Henry (the center director) said he puts his fan inside of his mosquito net, but I can’t make mine reach…

Finally, this is my gecko. I have seen him often next to my bed or sheltered under a hanging shirt during the day. He eats my bugs and I repay him by startling him with flash photography. He probably doesn’t think too highly of me. 

I also made a video tour of the base, but it is about 4 min long and isn't uploading. We'll have to try again later. The center is truly gorgeous, though. Plumeria and hibiscus flowers litter the ground and smell amazing in the morning and evening. The buildings are all painted white and go so nicely with the lush green of the surroundings. It is ridiculously hot, but there is plenty of shade and many fans to help the sea breeze. I like it here, it is comfortable (in all ways except temperature) and homey.

I made permanent marks on the reef...20 actually...

...but it was for science.

After dinner on my arrival day I was chatting with the two British boys on the base: Benjo (the main marine researcher) and Robin (a general volunteer). They taught me the game dopple and Benjo brought up that he wanted to get some permanent quadrats put in to one of the reefs the next morning. I had gleaned from previous conversation that Robin wasn't a diver and I was keen to get in the water, jet lag or not, so I cheerfully said I would help. At lunch the next day everyone was shocked at him for taking me diving on my first full day, saying that I needed my rest, so now it is put down for historical reference - I volunteered to go diving, I was no coerced. (In fact, I quite wanted to!)

It was a hassle getting out for the dive, however. Apparently the boat motor has to be kept locked in the office when not in use because otherwise it may be stolen by local fishermen. So as Robin and I carried down bags of dive gear and the fuel tank I looked back shocked to see Benjo in nothing but his swim shorts, straining under the weight of the engine like Jesus with his cross.

The three of us alone took the boat out to the reef and Benjo and I dove while Robin snorkeled. When I first got in I was shocked - the corals were like nothing I had ever seen before, not even in Zanzibar. Huge lacy plates of Acropora were everywhere - species i have never seen out of an aquarium and certainly not in that magnitude. Just stunning. And inside the delicate branches of these corals are tiny tiny fish - whole families of damsel fish who have claimed a coral head for their own, sometimes accompanied by a small red coral crab or blenny.

My job for the dive was to hammer in two nails at opposite corners of a quadrat that Benjo placed on the reef at 10 different sites. The first one was a bit dodgy - I can't even hammer that well on land - but soon I got the hang of it and it left me plenty of time to investigate the wonders of the East African reef.

Apart from lunch, a shower, a nap, and dinner, that was about it for day one!

This morning I went to meet Benjo in front of one of the hotels up the coast to look at some tidepools he would like investigated before a community meeting where I got the full who's who of Watamu marine conservation - People from Turtle Watch, Watamu Marine Association, Kenya Wildlife Service, and then Benjo and I from ARocha. It was great to meet everyone and to hear their practice presentations and ideas for upcoming meetings with the boat guides and tour operators of the area. They want to do a workshop with them to get everyone on the same page about marine park do's and don'ts for various species, ecosystems, etc. It's quite an interesting thing and it might be an exciting thing to be a part of while I'm here, if it actually takes off.

Grabbed a chapati before catching a ride back on a motorbike "taxi" with Benjo, then a truly magnificent lunch of samosas.

Later, I was surprised by a crash on the roof and got outside to see a parade of local monkeys go through the compound.

Monkey in a tree outside of my door

Monkey on the roof of the washing building

Monkey on my roof

Find the monkey with the washing

Things are going well and I'm starting to get get settled in a little bit, I'm adjusting more to the heat and not feeling jet lagged, really, which is great. Things will get better as I get a real routine down, right now I'm just figuring things out while everyone else has an agenda to do, so sometimes I feel a bit lost and out of place, but I think that by the end of the week I will be getting into some projects that should keep me feeling occupied and purposeful.

High point of the first two days: that first glimpse of the reef
Low point: biting into what I thought was a candy...then realizing it was soap...

Photographic Evidence of London

Two quick pictures. There are more, but download speeds are rubbish here, so they'll have to wait.

Lovely takeaway lunch spot!

Then an asian family came and offered to take my picture. :)

too bad you can't see my stork...haha

I made it!

Well, I made it to Kenya in one (sweaty) piece. I may have misjudged the seasons...I though I was coming in the rainy season...it's possible that we're still in the end of the doldrums and the rains haven't yet hit...which is why its so so hot. It's the kind of hot where you wash your face and get back to your room and already it's covered in sweat again. Sticky hot. But, good news, if I'm right about the rains things should be cooling off a bit soon...or I'll just acclimate to the sticky hot.

My travels went off without a hitch though, and I was unbelievably lucky in getting an entire row to myself on both long flights (hello, sleep!). London layover was fun, nothing too exciting, but I did quite enjoy my haddock and chips, sprinkled with vinegar and salt, straight from the paper bag on a bench outside of Westminster abbey (listening to Big Ben in the background), I met a GIANT stork (I thought it was a pelican at first...), was asked for directions, had a leisurely walk along the Thames, and got a handle on the tube system. So all in all, a success! 

It was quite a shock to the system though to go from cool Michigan and London to sticky Africa (even if the locals were wearing fleeces and stocking hats in both places), especially landing in Malindi. I couldn't believe the heat in the sun. I found a small tree to stand under while I waited for the baggage to arrive, I knew I would burn myself in the first 5 minutes of being there otherwise. By the time I got into the car with Benjo, the marine programme coordinator, My face was nearly dripping. 

But I got here and everyone was so friendly and welcoming and allowed me a nice long nap before dinner. I needed it desperately! 

I have to go move dive kit into the office, so I'll save my first dive on the Kenyan reef for the next post (keep you wanting more! haha).

tutaonana!

Today is the day

I guess technically I'm leaving today...since it is already 2am...but really I'm leaving tomorrow. Still, it's incredibly soon.

On Thursday I had a last winey dinner with the bestie (a somewhat weekly tradition) and said goodbye to one of my best friends, who gave me a wonderfully thoughtful birthday/easter/thanks-for-watching-the-cat present.

On Friday I said goodbye to the cutest 7 month old on the planet who I have been babysitting several days a week for the past few months as well as his parents, who have come to consider me a friend.
Then I got a twisty cone at Dairy Queen to console myself. It worked quite nicely. Driving around, cone in hand, music playing, windows open (a crack) and sandals on, I said goodbye to winter and smiled at the arrival of spring. I'm glad it peeked it's head out before I left, spring is my favorite season. But I'm not sad to be missing it. I have grander adventures ahead of me and I'll be back for late summer, another beautiful time in Michigan.

Today I said goodbye to my Aunt, little cousin, and grandparents over coffee and pastries at Herman's Boy. Later I gave a last hug to Sarah.

My cat, Smudge, definitely knows that I'm leaving. He has hardly left my side for the past couple of days - he's sleeping next to me right now. Poor buddy. There will be so many less belly rubs in his life for the next 3 months.

I have packed two bulky suitcases to the brink of the 50lb limit with clothes, toiletries, scuba gear, identification guides, and other random necessities (including a jar each of extra crunchy peanut butter and nutella - more like essentials in my book).

I have even (mostly) packed a carryon bag.

Tomorrow I will skype with my lovely sister in Portland, OR. Then around 6pm I'll kiss Smudgely goodbye and we'll drive out to Detroit where I'll have to say goodbye to my parents and start the long voyage halfway across the world.

I think I'm ready. I guess I have to be. Regardless, I'm excited.