Falling Behind!

These entries are falling behind the pace of my actual life. Blair just left, but I don't have time to write about that now, since I have to finish relating the story of my mid-week excursion. Hopefully tomorrow I can describe the events of this weekend. We'll see.

Thursday we awoke early, and after a quick breakfast the group split up. While the others went off in search of more art, Carrington and I played the role of the tourists, visiting the Kakamega National Forest. It’s Kenya’s last remaining slice of the once-mighty Congo jungle, and it’s a pretty cool place. It is technically managed by the Kenyan government, but all the day-to-day operation is done by trained local residents. Historically, damage was done to the local economy by the gradual introduction of conservation measures in the park, making hunting, timber harvesting, grazing and grasslands use, and even medicinal plant gathering illegal. But with the introduction of community-based training on botany and conservation, jobs began to reemerge. And with government, NGO, and even private organizations sponsoring programs ranging from medical research to butterfly propagation, the park has come to be viewed as more of a local treasure than a local curse. And tourist dollars (Including those from Carrington and I) help the cause as well. I was thrilled to see all of this, especially on reading an entire book on the merits of community-based participatory conservation last spring. Kakamega is a textbook examples of the benefits of such an approach.

Beyond that, the monkeys were cool, and the forest was beautiful. Not a whole lot of wildlife beyond the primates, but lots of interesting trees. The strangler figs were a particular favorite of mine. They germinate high in the canopy, and then send long, thin feelers winding down the trunk of the host-tree. Once they reach the ground, they rapidly take root, and before long they have engulfed the entire host tree, using it for support while it grows strong enough to stand on its own. By that time the host is pretty much out of luck, as the constricting roots of the fig have damaged it beyond regeneration. Eventually you have large fig trees with hollow centers living on their own where the other tree once stood. Pretty ruthless.

After finishing our tour Carrington and I began the long walk back to town. We were met after about an hour by Bev and the others, and were off once more, this time to Eldoret. Unfortunately, we arrived there too late to do any business, and had no choice to continue home. The road from Eldoret back to Nakuru is a particularly bad one, and the ride was unusually grueling. We stopped to stretch shortly after dusk on a stretch of “highway” just above Eldama Ravine, and were all surprised at the frigid wind that met us as we opened the doors. Apparently this particular pass is nearly 10,000 ft above sea level, explaining the lack of large trees, the sparse population, and how it managed to be in the upper 50s one degree north of the equator.

The rest of the ride home was long and tiring, but rather uneventful. I continue to be amazed at how diverse the terrain can be in Kenya, even in a relatively small area. I haven’t really been more than three hours in any one direction (even on these terrible roads), and I’ve seen everything from scorched and dusty desert to dark and muddy forests, mountains, lakes, boulder fields, and even flat, empty savannah. It’s a pretty incredible place.

Otherwise, all is still well. Although I can't explain the formatting problems in this post. This computer is really bizarre.