Nakuru

This weekend Justin and I took a trip to Nakuru to promote our filters at what we thought was to be the East African Best Practices Exhibition. It turned out it was the micro and small business exhibition. It wasn’t as prestigious or high profile as we had been hoping, but we still spent some time at the fair telling people about our filter, and the reception was good, we even managed to sell some. We shared a booth with David Ngige who was the head of Dajopan Waste Management. He won the award for “best innovation” at the festival.

There were other funny moments in our trip. The first night we stayed at the Kunste hotel, it was what Joshua had recommended, and we got to town a little late and didn’t have enough time to find another place.

The Kunste was probably the nicest hotel in Nakuru in the 60’s and 70’s, but it was starting to age a bit, and was still quite expensive. So the next morning we got up early and had giant breakfasts as they were included with our room. Then we left early to find the the Nakuru Backpackers Hostel.

The cab driver wasn’t very friendly. I had to be very insistent to get the same rate I’d gotten from our cab driver the previous day. And ontop of this he didn’t understand what a hostel was, or know where it was, so we told him to drop us off at the Nakuru Sports Club. We then found out that he dropped us off at the Nakuru Athletics Club. So we had some walking to do.

We walked there, but when we got there it wasn’t there, there was no Nakuru Backpackers Hostel. So we tried phoning them, but the phone number didn’t work. It’s important to know that addresses here are a pretty abstract concept. Most places list what street they are on, and a PO box number, there is no real address. But Justin has a smart phone, so we pulled out his google maps, and found that it was giving us a new place to go to, only a few kilometres away. So we walked there, but it wasn’t there again. 

So we looked on the internet and found another phone number, it didn’t work either… We walked a lot, eventually after about 2 hours we’d walked to the exhibition. After being there for a while we called our cab driver from the previous day.

First we rode to the Catholic Diocese of Nakuru (CDN) water treatment plant, on the outskirts of town. There they do a lot of work with bone char, which helps to remove chemicals from water. Being at the fair, there were a lot of people with very brown teeth, this is because the water supply in Nakuru is contaminated with excess fluoride. The bone char at the CDN is useful in removing fluoride from the water. They gave us a tour of their facilities, and it was quite interesting to see their process. Though they had some point of use filters, their focus seemed more geared towards community level projects such as mechanisms to purify borehole sources.

(pictures below are from Justin)

After our tour we asked our cab driver to take us to the Nakuru Backpackers Hostel. We got lost again, but this time we finally found a phone number. They were full. It turned out much of the confusion was due to the fact that they had moved, and hadn’t really updated anything. But they pointed us in the direction of another place, the El-Bethel Guest House, which was just as nice as the Kunste, but much cheaper. At the end of the day when we went back to the El-Bethel Guest House the owners of the Nakuru Backpackers were there, to ask us if we were happy with the accommodation. The next morning was to be Sunday, our bus was to leave at 1030, but we were supposed to be there by 1000.

Sunday morning Justin and I got up early, phoned our trusted cab driver, and he took us to Lake Nakuru National Park. As you might be able to tell from the pictures it was pretty spectacular. We took a lot of pictures but we couldn’t take pictures of everything, it was quite amazing.

We got there at 645am, we were at Baboon Point, the lookout over the lake, at about 930am. But the end of the trip wasn’t to be without its share of excitement. About 1.5 kilometers from the park gate the car would go no further, it was out of gas. That is one thing about the cars around here, no one puts more than a trips gas in them, at least not in any of the cabs I’ve been in.

Undaunted Justin and I used this opportunity to get out of the car and take some ridiculous pictures. We probably should have shaved.

Our cab driver phoned someone to bring us gas. He also promised us we wouldn’t miss our bus, because he knew someone who worked for the bus company. Eventually the gas came, the bus was late anyways, and a little after 1100 we were Kitale bound.

Kiminini Taxi

I am staying with Joshua in Kiminini, it is a fairly small town about 15-20 minutes away from Kitale, which is bigger. To get there we take something called a Kiminini taxi, the fare is 60 shillings for a seat (1KSH=88.75CDN), in these taxis, which are 20 year old Toyotas, there are four "seats" in the back and two upfront. The drivers won't leave until all the seats have been paid for, they aren't bad drivers, I've only been here a week, and only one of them has been suicidal.

Today Joshua, Justin, Martin and myself along with a filter took the ride into Kitale. Justin, Martin and I were hoping to talk to some the duka (shop) owners about our filters. It's a scenic ride, at times its cramped, especially with my dimensions, but the countryside is very green and there are people riding along side the road on bodas (bikes) and we are passing or being passed by matatus (a less roomy full sized van packed very full of people).

Halfway between Kiminini and Kitale there are 2 or 3 policemen standing on either side of the road, who will sometimes wave down the taxi driver. When this happens it is customary for only the taxi driver to exit the vehicle shake hands, before allowing the taxi driver to continue. Today we got waved down on our way into town. The driver pulled over, but before the driver could alight, from his window Joshua began speaking to the policeman in Kiswahili. The policeman didn't say much  and continued walking by the car. The taxi driver was unsure of what to do until Joshua told him to take the car back onto the road.

"He knows me, that is why he does not even want to shake hands" said Joshua, smiling as if talking oft an old friend. "He knows that if he does, I will make it so that he has no food."

To Kiminini

Things have been quite interesting here. I am in Kiminini now having spent most of Sunday on the bus from Nairobi, the roads were actually very good, the bus was still somewhat bumpy at times but I took some gravol and it was never a problem. Much of Thursday was dedicated to spending time at the UN building. It was a very big complex across from the US Embassy which had about 3 guards about every 30 meters. Inside the UN building was interesting they seemed keen on what we did but also wanted us to work as technical advisors to another project which they had spend a lot of money on, but had gone nowhere due to corruption. 

The next day we went and picked Justin up from the airport, he's staying for three months, and after picking him up we went to the Nairobi National Park, which was actually a zoo, and saw a few animals, including a rhino.

The bus ride the next day had some very nice scenery, I saw a herd of Zebras.

The Compound in Kiminini is very nice, it has hot showers and flush toilets, today we ran some errands in Kitale, the bigger city nearby. I should have some pictures soon.

May 12

We rented a cab for the day (9-5), first we went to the industrial part of town, which was quite interesting, some slum areas around there, everything here is walled in with barbed wire or glass shards on top of the walls, and with a gate and security guards. and there is the smell of pollution from the cars everywhere, and driving is an art whereby people try to avoid collisions by an informal set of rules.

Anyways, the first stop was DPL packaging, where we went to check on an order of boxes which had been placed. This took a while as we had to deal with the designer and sort out some issues as such, but it was successful as everything was confirmed, and we left the basic design with the company, so now we have to hope everything works out with the design, but we remain optimistic.

Next we went to Kenpoly, our bucket provider to get a quote from them and to inform them of a minor change in our bucket design, a bit of waiting again, but not as bad as at DPL, a good stop. By this time it was already 1230 so we went to the supermarket to pick up a few things for ourselves and lunch as well. The supermarket was pretty ridiculous, It seemed like a loose collection of shops, but was in fact all one store, and it had everything, but all of it in enclaves in its own part of the store, except for the grocery part, which was a little more straight forward. My lunch was a chicken and bacon sandwhich, like a sub, pretty good, I also bought chips. Which I am not eating, they are chili lemon and are actually delicious.

So we finished shopping and proceeded to go to the ministry of public health, and medical services, we arrived unannounced were pointed up to the seventh floor, we met with the secretary of the person we wanted to meet. We were mostly hoping for mapping information, but Subir ended up in a long explanation about various things (his business card says dr.). Then some public relations guy walked in, he seemed more keen on us, but they told us to write down who we were and show up first thing tomorrow. We said we would. We'll see how it goes.

So then we went to the center for health solutions, an non profit organization. We had another brief chat, they are another NGO, working here, the view from the office was quite spectacular, but I'm afraid I didn't get any pictures of it, I've got a few pictures for later, when the internet is better though.

After that we went to another market, Subir wanted to get some money out of the ATM, but he tried four and none worked. So we went home, arriving at 510.

Tomorrow we're going to the UN building and Survey of Kenya.

First Pictures