Visa Run

My visa was to expire, so I fought traffic to Nyayo house to renew it. The officer gave me a five day extension for some reason, and told me to come back in a week to get the extension. 

So I did, and the same officer told me he couldn't renew and I had to leave the country. I wasn't to put out at the thought of a last minute trip to Ethiopia, but the officer's incompetence was annoying.

So I bought a ticket, packed a tent, and planned to take public trans from the airport to a nearby park and hike around for a week. Two hours in traffic meant I arrived at the airport late, and was barely in time for my flight. All was well until immigration, where the official was very disturbed by the irregular stamps from my recent visits to Nyayo house. I explained that I didn't understand any more than him. Well, he hemmed and hawed talked to his supervisor, told me I wasn't traveling, said I would be arrested, and eventually let me through. I was the last one to board.

I made contact with the MCC regional reps, and headed to their house. I was thankful to not try to figure things out completely cold. Bruce and Rose were incredibly hospitable, and I quickly felt at home. They had a trip to visit a development site, so I tagged along on the ten hour drive north. We left before dawn, crossed Addis, and golden fields of teff and wheat as the sun rose. The fields were a patchwork of the small-holder farmers' individual stakes, climbing the steeper slopes with regular terraces.

These cattle were unperturbed by our land rover and had no intention of sharing the right of way.

From Woldia I headed west to Lalibela, a world heritage site in the mountains. I found a bus well before dawn, and my seat mate regaled me with tradition and history on the nine hour drive.

I arrived in Lalibela, wandered around the town, then ran up the closest ridge to catch the sunset.

The main attraction for most is the monolithic rock-hewn churches (I was at least as excited about mountains). But the churches were very impressive, carved downward from the surface out of the volcanic rock. Each founded upon and hollow from the living stone in a single piece

Hailu, my guide, was the son of a politician in the oppressive communist regime, and grew up with his Grandfather, the head priest of St. Georges (Pictured above). He lived in the 200 year old traditional priest's hut he's standing in front of. Some of the friends he played hide and seek with in tombs and secret passageways are priests and nuns in the churches now.

 The history of the churches is shrouded in mystery and intrigue, congruent with most of Ethiopia's long, rich past. (For example, the churches were carved in the 12th century, hundreds of miles inland. Included in the relief carvings, windows, and decorations are symbols from around the world: swastika from India, plenty of connections to Jerusalem, Maltese cross from Europe (the same one worn by the crusaders of the same time period) among others. And no one knows for sure how the connections to the rest of the world came about) I was awed at the continuity of the culture and religion of the area. Axum was founded around 500 BC, and there has been almost contiguous civilization since then. If you ever have an afternoon to invest, Ethiopian history is well worth a bit of study.

After touring the churches I headed up the mountain with Abe and Tobalo, two guys who befriended me. We hiked hard for four hours, and made it to the top of the plateau just as it started to rain. Above the sheer barrier of the ragged escarpment was heather and green fields, dotted with cattle. I was thankful that they had found a friend of a friend with a spare house. It would have been very wet to sleep under the stars as I originally planned. Our host welcomed us with a coffee ceremony, replete with roasted barley and burning frankincense.

The rain slowed, so I went to look at the sunset, and was rewarded with one of the brightest rainbow's I have ever seen.

These kids were intrigued by me, and asked that I take a picture of them. There was a fifth who fled the picture, but rejoined the group to look at the result.

I got up before dawn and sat on a rock and watched the sun rise behind the peak of Abuna Yosef. The air was so wonderful, it was even more pleasant than usual to meditate and pay attention to the sensation of breathing. The hike back to town was long and hot. I looked back towards the ridge we'd just come from, missing the cool, clear mountain air, fragrant with the smell of heather moorland.

Ethiopian air has an excellent network of cheap flights around the country, so I turned a 12 hour bus ride into a 35 minute flight.

Mt. Kenya

I've had some pretty amazing experiences recently, but am feeling remarkably uninspired in writing about them. But here are some photos of places of beauty worth far more than any number of my words.

My friend and Rosedale roommate, David Wolfer, came to visit from Cape Town where he is earning his MPH. He decided we needed to climb Mt. Kenya on a Thursday afternoon, so we grabbed some gear and set off at 0530 the next morning to attempt a 16000 ft summit. We drove upcountry, dealt with the hassle at the gate and set out across the heather.

(The guard was shockingly helpful, but recent regulation changes made payment a challenge. Note: Kenya National Parks no longer take cash, you must pay by M-Pesa or bank transfer. This can be challenge when there's no cell service, no banks within an hour drive, and you have no money in M-Pesa)

We hiked for four and a half hours, crossing 12 km along the ridge above this gorge, waterfall, and mountain lake. Not shabby for a hike from 2950 - 4000 m (10,000-13,000 ft). Especially for David, who had come from an elevation of 10 ft just a week before.

The altitude proved quite exhausting so we camped just below Mintos Hut around 13k ft. On the side of the ridge overlooking the gorge, I could hear the waterfall from its plunge out of lake Michaelson two or three kilometers away. On the other side it was completely, utterly silent. No distant bass from matatus, or roar of a highway. No wind, birds, insects, or even crawling ants. I have only experienced this two other times in my life, and it is an odd sensation (or lack thereof.)

David lay on his back for a while re-oxygenating his blood, and I sat on some rocks and watched the sun set behind our goal - Point Lenana (the slightly rounded peak in the center. To the right are Batian and Nellion, the true peaks, but these require climbing gear. Another day...)

Dawn broke to reveal a frost encrusted world well above the clouds

So we continued up the ridge, past Lake Michaelson (on whose shores I intend camp next time.)

By 1500 we reached Austrian Hut and set up camp. It was quite cloudy, but I struck off alone to the summit in hopes of a clearing. I was blessed with a few minutes of stellar view of the surrounding crags and glacier.

(which I got to crawl inside of - Visit Ice Cave: Check).

It sleeted a bit during the night. A bit more than we realized, and we woke up to white out and four inches of snow.

The hike to the peak was a bit harrowing, traversing an ice covered hogback ridge with several hundred feet down on either side.

But we made it! And down the other side. We didn't even get lost in the fog and fall into a crevasse when we ditched the trail and went scrambling through a trackless, snow covered boulder field with twenty feet of visibility. Topo maps are a wonderful invention, but I need to get some with higher resolution.

And I was elated to find a snow-melt waterfall to bathe in.

Musings on a Matatu

Rural Kenya is cohesive. As Debbi commented 'the worlds are so scrambled in the city, it's hard to know which you are in.' The first and third worlds collide, juxtaposing development and poverty, luxury apartment towers and odoriferous slums, Prados and bodas (with equally abominable drivers). The contrast in jarring. The poverty which is Reality for most of the world's population attenuates to statistics by the time it penetrates the economic bubble of the US. Here the bubble usually ends at your car window.
I'm constantly reminded of my privilege, and the distance between my existence and that of the children yelling 'mzungu!' as I pass. Nairobi is a city of over 3 million, without the systems that make a city livable in the US. Sure there's healthcare, electricity, and water (most of the time) and people usually urinate all in one place. But from road drainage to banking systems things don't just work. So everyone hurries, clawing their way through traffic and bureaucracy (with no help from laws or shared understanding). Governance is superior to most in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it still seems to exist primarily to line the pockets of the Mkubwa at the top. And when it's in no one's best interest to work within the broken system, they waste their striving like the donkeys pulling at 90 degrees from each other while hitched to the same cart, and thereby causing a five kilometer jam on the new superhighway.

Outside the city the world is different. There's perhaps a greater gap between me and the pedestrians I bike past on the 'rough road', but I know what to expect. People are working, eating (or not some days), laughing (especially at me), and passing through time at the same rate. But unlike me, 'they are on friendly terms with time, and the thought of beguiling or killing it does not enter their heads.'* I suspect the concept of seizing it is similarly foreign. And it fits together: the clear air, hot sun, strong bodies. Life is hard, the rains haven't come in two years for some people, but there's always a way. Relatives help out, school fees are eaten (classes will be there next year), cows are sold, and life goes on.
Until it doesn't. Some parts of Kenya are experiencing severe famine, and people die. But somehow that fits too. African culture does not share the crippling western obsession with continuing to breathe. Death is sad for the people left, but it's a part of life. And life means hanging hand-washed clothes on the bushes before walking to church along dusty roads. It's the driver of the motorcycle carrying 150 kgs of charcoal, piled on the back and hanging off the sides. It's the mama who tills, plants, and weeds by hand, in hope of a harvest to provide for the child tied on her back throughout the process. And the older brother who sits watching the family livestock isn't pining for the end of the day, he is living.

* From Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen, the pen name of Karen Blixen, an early settler in the Nairobi area

Orange

How Great Thou Art played in the matatu as Mt. Longonot came into view. The setting sun streamed in orange beams around the peak, illuminating the dust saturated sky. We climbed the escarpment, and intervening speed bumps, with the sun shining directly through the bus. My seat mate seemed amused when, in a moment of self forgetfulness, I waved to my shadow. A young couple, dancing/walking along the footpath, apparently thought it was directed at them, or maybe their enthusiastic greeting was simply due to my race. As we crawled upwards behind a struggling lorry I thought of highway robbers who take advantage of lorries' lack of power and unload the trucks as they 'drive'. We crested the top of the ridge and the valley was lost from view, but the sun still flashed in orange bursts between the trunks of the evergreen screen. The heat of the valley floor dropped with the sun, and gave way to the thin, cool air of the high plateau. Above the sunset Venus gleamed, its orange tint subtly carrying the torch of the faded day.

Seeking the Wild

I dipped out of work early on a Friday afternoon, threw my stuff in the car and headed north and east to the Kerio valley. I didn't really know where I would spend the night so I figured I would drive until it started getting dark and stop somewhere. Unfortunately Wilderness is harder to find in the bush of Africa then the outskirts of LA. I turned right up a 'rough road' (the term for the mostly unimproved strips of washboard that provide the only access to many parts of the country)  that led back toward the escarpment in hopes of finding somewhere to pull off. I noticed a sign saying there is a safari Lodge that direction so I figured that could be my last resort. They were very confused when I asked for a flat place to camp, but for a price were willing to provide it.

I woke up at 4:30 struck camp under the stars and headed on my way in the pre-dawn dark. I ate breakfast at a gorge where the Kerio River sliced through a basaltic dike. I was very tempted to scope out the depth of the river and jump in - it looked like a fun 50 foot drop - but it was still a bit cold and I lacked the motivation. So I headed back up the other side of the escarpment to Kabernet.

The difference in ecology and climate between the bottom of the Valley and the top was remarkable.

 At the top everything was green and lush with a winding road twisting through hills and then dropping back down into the sun-scorched valley. 

Here in the flat acacia scrub and the sun was so hot it was unpleasant to get out of the car.

I drove first to Lake Baringo, pulled off and biked up to an overlook. I got a thorn in my tire and had to push my bike back to the car. A crowd of children gathered to watch me patch the hole. The Lake Baringo area turned out to consist mostly of resorts and tourist traps, so I left as quickly as was feasible. I headed for Lake Bogoria despairing of ever getting beyond the reach of my constant spectators. When I arrived I found that the entrance fee was $50 for non-residents but after explaining hermetic technology to the attendants they let me in for the resident fee of $10. I was elated to finally find wild-ness.

A very aggressive ostrich.
These birds are huge and scary!

Flooding has destroyed most of the park's infrastructure and I drove the roughest road I have ever tried to traverse in the little Nissan (protip: long wheelbase and low clearance is not a trail-worthy combination). I crossed boulder fields, tried not to get high-centered, and climbed slopes so steep the car barely made it up. I eventually arrived at the hot springs about twenty kilometers in.

I looked around a bit and then went on a hunt for a campsite on my mountain bike. As I went back the way I came much of the road was even challenging as a mountain bike route. When I nearly tumbled over the handlebars on several occasions, I was amazed I'd made it that far in the car. And I did not look forward to the return trip. I found several decent campsite options before stumbling across an incredible spot overlooking the lake on the escarpment. It looked to have once been an established site, but the shelters had collapsed and it clearly hadn't been used in years. The scrub encroached on the area as well as the road, and I had to clear boulders to drive in. But sitting on a ledge, drinking tea, and listening to the two-thousand flamingos bedding down a kilometer away, it was clear the happiest I can possibly be is in the wilderness.

There was Evening...

...And there was Morning

I cooked breakfast in a steam vent.

Homeward bound

Bike-venture Episode 1

I was on the road by 0900, having slathered my exposed skin with sunscreen hoping to combat the equatorial sun. I hadn’t a route or destinations planned, but I figured with water, mixed nuts, and TP I should be good for the day. I still don’t have sunglasses, so my eyes filled with the dust of lorries on the packed dirt road. On downhills the speedbumps slowed traffic, but provided jumps for me. My bike tolerated the road surface better than many four wheel vehicles and I often managed to pass them, though it required biking hard through their dust. I left the main road as soon as I could and followed side roads to approach the coordinates which were my only guidance to the waterfall I hoped to find. As I rounded a curve steep hills appeared, cooperating with my music to inspire a fit of ecstasy. Riding with my arms out works well on US roads, but the washboard and potholes rudely interrupted my celebration. I crossed a river near the coordinates and asked directions from the youth washing his bike in the river. He sent me up a hill whose road surface was tortured by erosion. Even on a mountain bike it was technical.

All I found at the bottom of the hill was a doubly locked gate, so I asked a family carrying their luggage up the hill about the falls. They sent me back the way I came. Ravines, rocks, and four-inch-deep washboard is even more challenging to traverse downhill. Crashing was a very convenient option, but I refrained. I asked a guard at gate of a hydroelectric plant about the falls, and he said I could access it through there. Thirty minutes in the sun later a guy showed up and took me down to the plant. I oohed and ahhed at the equipment and finally was handed off to another guy who took me to the falls. Guides rob so much of the experience I tried to convince them I could go alone, but they insisted. We picked our way down the slippery mud slope, dodging the nettles that lined the path. The falls has eroded quite an overhang, curtained by the falls. Here I was able to release my guide (with 50 shillings for his pains) and enjoy the falls on my own. I sat for some time, drowning my thoughts in the roar of the falls. The river, swollen by the rains, drops a sheer 70 feet, creating a rainbow in the spray. With some regret I left the shelter cave and scrambled up some boulders back into the sun.

I decided to continue following the road though I wasn’t sure where it would take me, hoping perhaps to reach a tall hill which looked tantalizingly close. The road less travelled dwindled to a track with head-high bushes encroaching the borders. I persisted until some mamas standing outside their hut stopped me to chat, surprised to see a mzungu, especially alone. With what little Swahili I have access to I asked if the road would lead anywhere. They counselled me to turn back though but I didn’t catch whether it was for my safety or because the road was a dead end. I climbed out of the river valley and followed the ridge on a more established road until it too vanished into a steep boulder field strewn with head sized rocks. I navigated the slope far more effectively than a similar one at Mill Creek trails in Missouri, not even wrecking once. At the bottom my persistence was rewarded with a smooth singletrack, used by cattle and piki-pikis.

I followed ‘roads’ like this one for several hours: crossing rivers, through ridge-top pastures and shambas, and rolling through villages with every eye trained on me. The road turned back towards home, so I left the mountain for another day. It was still probably 15 km away and my legs were already cramping with 20 km or so between me home. I eventually came out on the main road, 10 km south of my house. 

The map showed a back way home, and I was happy for an option other than forty minutes of dodging matatus, pikis and lorries. The ‘back road’ turned out to be a track that led through a field (with cows and an abandoned bus), mud holes, a swamp, horrendous washboard...

...and back to the main road. 

At this point I was tired enough that riding on pavement was an attractive option so I followed the road back to town. The adventure had left my bike in a sorry state so I stopped at a car wash and cleaned it with a pressure washer. Before I reached home I passed a bike shop, and a fundi was more than happy to lubricate my chain for 20 shillings. His chain lube turned out to be used motor oil, so I wiped off what I could to keep it from accumulating dirt and causing more wear than it would prevent.

The Somali family on whose compound I live had a lot of people over for lunch. I greeted the men on the front porch sweaty, bleeding, and coated in mud. I must have made an impression because I was invited to join just after I finished showering. The food was delicious, and I got to meet the father, and uncle (from Toronto), two brothers, several friends (turned out to be farmers, fascinated by the bags we sell at Elite), and all their children. I ate my fill of goat, chicken, and chapatti, drank tea, and chatted with the brother who just finished med school. It was lovely, but by the time I took my leave I was quite ready for the coffee and relaxing that awaited.

At church the next morning I met Patrick and Whitney, who are here with Samaritans Purse. The invited me for supper, and I had a wonderful time playing ping-pong and chatting about the path to becoming a missions pilot. Their stories and pictures awakened my childhood obsessions with flight and ambitions to do just this. Patrick said the best way to get started is to find a couple guys to go in on a plane, and hire a good instructor.

Any takers?

...For Kenya

On the way to Eldoret we stayed at a camp on Lake Naivasha.
This grove of green-bark acacia was quite picturesque at sunrise.

On the flight to Nairobi I chatted with an Indian guy from Dubai who works in hydraulic repairs for a shipping company. He is from Gao, a city in India whose residents are eligible for Portuguese residency, grandfathered in by colonial occupation. On the drive home from the airport I was amazed at the poly-story buildings which have since I was there six years ago. The roads were smoother, I was told a bypass was under construction to alleviate traffic, and I saw far less scattered trash than I remembered. The jam passing through Nairobi was all too familiar however, as was the ungainly ornamentation of Marabou storks along Mombasa Road.

Storks and traffic in 2009...
 (look closely at the tree farthest from you and closest to the road)

...And in 2016

The sunset I found wandering dirt paths on Aram's bike.

The view from the esccarpment.

 I spent a few days in Nairobi hanging out with Aram and Debbi (brother and sister-in-law) and the kids. It was lovely to have a yard with trees, and be able to bike out into cattle fields and green. I played some ultimate, met cool people (Nairobi Ultimate draws a disproportionately large concentration intelligent, accomplished, and mindful people), and generally enjoyed myself. I braved Nairobi roads and got familiar with the city via piki-piki (motorcycle). I actually became fairly comfortable on the bike, learning to exploit the flexibility of traffic laws. As has become the usual pattern, as soon as I was becoming at home in Nairobi, it was time to move to Eldoret to the new challenge of acclimating to a foreign city on my own.

Aram and the family accompanied me for the move up there and helped shop for the apartment. With a spare afternoon we visited Kerio Valley, an escarpment which is apparently one of the worlds premier paragliding destinations. I sadly didn’t get a chance to pursue that, but I did sit on some rocks watch the acrobatics of sparrows while a dust devil, storm, and rainbow crossed the valley below. Aram and I also threw a disc around among the hotel’s terraced gardens. The slope and wind off the escarpment made for quite a challenge and we amazingly left without any dislocations.

Priska joined from atop a honeysuckle encrusted retaining wall.
She missed plenty of  bid-able throws.

Shadrach had his own dragons to fight.

Then they went back to Nairobi, and I jumped into the work here. In the last two weeks I have been attempting to learn everything, from the language to sales to accounting and operations. I worked ten to twelve hours a day my first week, and didn’t have time until the weekend to finish setting up my apartment. It was all made up for by a lovely, rainy Sunday afternoon with tea and a book. Everyday tasks are more interesting here than in the US. The bike ride to and from work is remarkably challenging in the chaos of traffic. Matatus, the minibus public transport, completely ignore traffic laws creating an ever shifting gauntlet to test the cyclist. I have realized that it's much like mountain biking: you pick a line, stick with it, and hope you don't die. Buying vegetables is a battle of wits with the sellers since there are few set prices (and even those are a mystery to me). After my first trip I was happy to learn from my coworkers that I had not been ripped off too badly.

     So now I live in Eldoret. I work, eat, sleep, and bike, and look up as often as I can to see how cool this opportunity is. Simply my skin tone is enough to excite shouts from kids I pass and stares from the adults. The neighbor kids come stand in my yard and watch me sweep, and two of them wandered into my apartment while I was writing this paragraph to see what I am up to. It is draining to be the center of attention everywhere I go, but I’m working on not being frustrated about it. My saturdays have consisted of bike adventures, (stay tuned for a post about that, it was amazing: Waterfalls, swamps, and disappearing roads) and I think I was probably the event of the week for many of the villages I passed through. This is my life for now and I’ve no doubt that as soon as it becomes normal I’ll be off to the next challenge.