Lake Magadi: Traveling to the Escarpment

First off, for those of you who don’t know what an escarpment is that’s ok, I didn’t either.  “An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that occurs from erosion or faulting and separates two relatively level areas of differing elevations.”  So now we may proceed.

After seeing the flamingos we continued on to the Nguruman Escarpment where we would be staying for a couple of days.

The landcruiser has these great portholes on the top that allow you to sit on the roof. We spent the next hour sitting on the roof while we drove from desert into a jungle-like area. We spotted a couple of giraffes and zebras on the way.  This part was most excellent.

The biggest difference I could find between Kenya and Namibia is that Kenya isn’t divided into giant farms with fencing around them. It seems like animals and people are free to roam wherever, so definitely more of a chance of seeing random wildlife pretty much anywhere.

We pulled into Ngurumani late in the afternoon.  We stopped to fill up with gas.  Jacob entertained the local kids with some magic. Shortly thereafter a couple of us checked into the guest house while the others headed on to a campsite.  I chose the guesthouse due to the promise of a shower. I went to bed at 8pm and slept very well.

Kiswahili Lessons with Esther

Ever since my first day (4 days ago), a group of us have been taking Swahili lessons in the morning for an hour.  Looks like we are planning on continuing this for the foreseeable future.  Definitely a way to wake up and rack the brain in the morning.  I can’t remember the last time I had homework either.

A couple phrases for you:

Karibu (care – ree – boo) – Welcome

Asante (ah – san – te) – Thank You

Kwa heri (kwah – hairy) – Good Bye

Older Posts

I forgot to mention it, but I posted all of my old blog posts from Kenya (Part 1) and Namibia to this blog.  Feel free to peruse the archives for my previous experiences.

My First Day at the “Garage”

Not sure how I’d feel today, I actually woke up fairly well rested and ready to learn why I’m here.

Our office is literally next door to where I live on Ngong road which makes for a carefree commute; aka, no mutatus.

The day started with some Swahili lessons at 8:30. We’re going to be doing this every day for quite some time apparently. Not for any other reason than to learn the language because everyone at work speaks English. Should be fun though, I even had some homework tonight.

Next was me learning a bit about the various businesses that we are working with so thought I’d share some basic thoughts: rent payments via mobile phone, game development, mobile music downloads, dating site, emergency loans via mobile phone and online gambling. Not necessarily the most altruistic businesses, but most are very useful for a mobile dependent population.

Normal business days involve us starting at 9:30am with a group meeting and then it appears we’re pretty much doing work to help in any way we can. So far, most folks have paired with startup to provide some dedicated help.

Today I helped by doing some logo design and providing general advice for a couple of businesses. Tomorrow I begin working with Mpepea. Given my attentionally deficient behavior it should be nice to have a couple of projects to work on at a time.

My coworkers are mostly from Denmark and others being from England and the U.S.

I’ll leave you today with a couple of images from the office:

Renewed Hatred of Mosquitoes

The battle is on again. Not sure why, but these Kenyan mosies are loud. 4am and all I hear is bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Lights on. Dead mosie. Lights off. bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZ!!!! Lights on. Dead mosie. Lights off. Repeat. You get the picture. I’m buying a net today.

Getting Ready: I’ll admit, I was a little frazzled

So I had all day Saturday to get ready to go.  I was pretty much all packed, the weather was beautiful and I had a list of things.  So I got my run in, I had my delicious Qdoba burrito and I got to watch my Nittany Lions pull off a come back.  That all left me with approximately 30 minutes to actually pack and tie up all loose ends.

Being a Woodruff we tend to forget things.  Frankly, if I don’t forget something then I feel that I’m somehow doomed.  So what did I forget?

  • Didn’t put on deodorant for what was to be 16 hours in a plane and about 24 hours total travel time
  • Didn’t include my Reds baseball cap; now they’re definitely winning the World Series
  • My pumpkin pie.  I was so excited that I found one, but my burrito belly wouldn’t have any of it. It’s sitting on my living room table with one minor bite taken out of it.  So heads up folks, pumpkin for Christmas please.

Thank you to Shanna for taking me to the airport and helping to keep me calm. The past couple of days have been quite the emotional stress and I think it was harder this time around than when I was supposed to be gone for a year. I think it might have something to do with a cute blonde wife of mine. She’s the best.

New Blog

I’m starting up a new blog in order to write down my experiences while I’m back in Nairobi.  Yep, I’m headed back.  It’s been almost 5 years since I last headed off to Kenya with minimal expectations and plenty of excitement.

This time around I won’t be volunteering, but instead I’ll be working with 88mph as a business mentor.  The organization works as a startup accelerator for African run web and mobile businesses, targeting African markets.  That’s just about as much as I know at this point.

I leave October 6th and return in December.  I’ll keep you posted.

Hot Shower

Just had my first hot shower in a while…easily ranks in the top 5 showers ever.  Don’t take your hot showers for granted.

Shower vs. JB

Due to the fact that my new house does not have hot water at the moment…fingers crossed…I had the first of hopefully few cold showers this evening.  Welcome to Africa!

Don’t Feed Beggars

Or at least, not when you around other Namibians.  They understandably get mad because they think these people should be working instead of begging…I tend to agree.  I like to cite South Park, Season 11, ‘Night of the Living Homeless’ as an example of what can happen.

IT Status in Namibia

Let’s just say that I learned a thing or two about how IT is viewed at the Ministry of Health and Social Services.  Annual development budget of N$500,000 for all of Namibia…roughly $66,000 USD.  There are a total of 4 people working on IT for the entire health system.  This is not promising.

My question is why am I up in Opuwo when the central Ministry is where the real help is needed?  This will be discussed.

Books

Books are more expensive here than they are in Canada, but worth it when the author is Bill Bryson. I’ll be sure to put together a book report when I find the time to be that bored.

Epupa Falls

So this weekend was a holiday weekend in Namibia and what do you do on a holiday weekend? You travel. Thus, obligated, my friends Penny, Jeske, her family and I took off north to Epupa. What is in Epupa? I knew there were some waterfalls and with little in Opuwo to keep me around it seemed like the only logical decision.

We started from Opuwo around 10:15am on Friday and headed north. The road turned to gravel 2 minutes into our drive….yes, Opuwo is small. 10 minutes into our trip we found a friend of Penny’s who was on the side of the road…they needed a pump for their donkey trailer…one bicycle pump, here you go. I asked Penny the purpose of a bicycle pump because it clearly can’t be for her car…it is.

The road from Opuwo to Epupa is an amazing trip. The road consistency changes roughly 100 different times, the surroundings get more scenic by the minute as the height of the mountains increases and you really start to see what an untouched world is like. We stopped for lunch around noon and within 2 minutes we have Himba crawling all over us asking for food, water and money. We obliged with a healthy mayonnaise sandwich for all of them…the lone pregnant woman we gave some of our meat to. They were extremely happy to enjoy lunch with us. As we got into our car a Himba gentleman…very traditional…approached us and kept speaking in his language which we clearly don’t understand. Sir, we don’t speak your language. This did not phase our guest. Do you want money? Do you want water? Here’s an apple…you want that? With some further hand gesturing we found out that he wanted a ride…Penny and I looked at each other and said, why not. I took a shot in the dark and asked him in Swahili…’Wapi?’ which means where and he seemed to understand and found out he wanted to go to Okapika (or something like that). He was a happy fellow. He seemed to love laughing at the toyota truck we passed, which sounded as if it had an unhappy goat stuck under the hood. We dropped him off about 30 minutes later and within 10 minutes we were in Epupa.

Wow! A simple, yet thorough way to describe Epupa falls.

There are 3 campsites and we defaulted to the third as the other two were fulll….seemed ok with us as no one else was staying at the third. Pictures at the falls and time relaxing. Water and beer on the way back to camp. Pasta and veggies for dinner. Had a fun night of sitting around the campfire, drinking a rum and coke from the local Shabeen and sharing funny passages from my Bill Bryson book. Beer was actually hot to the touch so had to mix it up a bit.

Woke up around 3am to the sound of the local roosters who clearly didn’t understand that 3am is not when the sun comes up. Slept a bit more and actually got up around 7. Went down to the falls to get some early morning pics…awesome. The sun was hot by 7:30 and I went back to camp from some breakfast….delicious Apple Cinnamon Instant Oatmeal. Said our goodbyes to Jeske’s and her family and made our way out for a hike. We set off and made our way down stream to check out the beaches…with ‘crocodiles.’ It was hot and dry. We spent most of our time walking through high grass and hot sand. Everything plant seemed to love me…I still have some leftover even now. We met a guy from South Africa called Alan and enjoyed our walk to the far beach. He had no shoes on and was very quick to jump in the water despite warnings from another man who had ‘seen’ crocodiles not long ago. I withheld.

The afternoon involved some nap time. This was followed by a very cold shower. Mrs. H.S. Ball’s Chutney chips made a guest appearance.

We went to another campsite for a cold beer and enjoyed a sunset with Windhoek Lager by our sides. Polly the pigeon made a guest appearance and showed off by jumping on everyone’s shoulders, heads and into a bucket full of food. If you stop by, ask them about Polly. Early night and more stars than you can count. Question. What is the dark spot in the Milky Way Galaxy when viewed in the southern hemisphere?

Woke up to cows screaming as they were being captured by the local farmers. Sorry…woke up to the roosters at 3am again. Got out of bed at 7am. I got some great video of the captures which I hope to share soon as words don’t do it justice. Trip back saw us giving a ride to a local and then picking up 2 more who had a flat tire. They wanted to use Penny’s 16″ tire on their car that used 14″. No.

That’s pretty much it. I’ll be uploading pictures soon…have a lot so be sure to check my pictures page soon.