Notebook Nairobi
This is the blog of former LD reporter Cynthia Vukets. Cynthia is in Nairobi on a media fellowship with the Aga Khan Foundation Canada
Climate changing culture
January 27th, 2010
This herd of 25 cattle used to be 500. The lack of water and grass brought on by the drought has killed off up to 90 per cent of Maasai herds.
But for the rest of their Maasai community, the loss of nearly 90 per cent of cattle herds has been devastating.
A prolonged drought has hit East African farmers and pastoralists hard. Many in Northern Kenya are now dependent on food aid from the government and international community to survive.
In Southern Kenya, next to the Tanzanian border, Maasai herders are beginning to drive their cattle home from the neighbouring country. They’d crossed the border last year to search for pasture and water.
Standing at a surface dam in Magadi Division, about one hour off the paved road, Lucy gestures towards a herd of about 25 cattle.
“That used to be a herd of over 500,” she says.
Read More…
Snapshot: Random acts of gardening
January 12th, 2010
I have my very first vegetable garden and I am very proud. It is only three pots, but in them grow carrots, lettuce, kale, peppers and cucumber. I often force people who haven't the slightest interest in vegetables to look at my pot garden. Then one day last week, I woke up to find someone had staked my cucumbers! With a stick from the backyard. It nearly brought tears to my eyes. And I still don't know who did it.
Quote of the week
January 12th, 2010
“The child cannot prevent the infection but it can be prevented.”
- Raila Odinga, Kenyan PM, on mother-to-child HIV transmission
Some fun facts:
- 34,000 kids are born HIV-positive in Kenya every year
- about 60 % of Kenyans don’t know their HIV status
- and 200,000 people who need to be on ARV’s aren’t
But the government has a new strategy. The National AIDS Strategic Plan. To halve the number of new infections and reduce HIV-related deaths by 25 % in four years. It’s going to take innovative new approaches, they say. Sort of like this one:
Convoy joy
January 12th, 2010
Me and the crew, cruisin government style
My first government-sponsored media trip. And I find out about it at 9:30 p.m. the night before.
“Do you know what it’s about?” I ask my producer.
“Farming.”
“Do you know what’s happening with transportation?”
“Call this guy.”
So I send said guy a text message because I’m worried he’s putting his kids to bed. He calls me back at 11:15 at which point I’ve already put myself to bed.
Up at 6:00 the next morning, just to make sure I don’t miss my ride up to Laikipia in Central Kenya.
“We’re leaving from Utalii Hotel at 7:30,” says guy I was supposed to call.
Even though I calculate that 7:30 Kenyan time can’t be earlier than 8:00, I’m at the hotel by 7:45. I really don’t want to miss my ride because I love getting out of Nairobi. Read More…
Just because I’m white . . .
January 12th, 2010
Doesn’t mean I have to look like crap all the time.
Repeat after me, people: cargo pants are for soldiers, carpenters and nine-year-olds only. Not for touring Nairobi. You really don’t even need them on safari, as you’ll be sitting on your butt in a car all day long and then chilling in your lodge all evening being waited on hand and foot. The chances that you’ll have to whip a jacknife out of your zippered inner thigh pocket to slay a charging baboon are slim.
And dear “dirty hippy tourist”: it’s ok to bathe here. Nairobi may be suffering from a water shortage but I’m quite sure your hotel/backpackers hostel has ample supply, even if it is delivered to your room in a bucket. So please wash. You’re making us all look bad. And you smell a bit funky.
Snapshot: Island time
January 6th, 2010
I caught this guy asleep in the middle of the day at a Stone Town park. He is the image of "Zanzibar time" for me. We also have "Kenyan time" which tends to be about an hour or two behind international time. But when that extra hour gives you time for afternoon naps, who can knock island time?
Buy five healthy adults, get two kids for free
January 5th, 2010
And other stories of the Zanzibari slave trade . . . . Our guide, Nicholas, leads us down a set of stairs into a stone chamber the size of a closet. One candle is burning, but doesn’t throw enough light for us to see into the two holding cells on either side.
This single candle was the only thing illuminating the slave pits below St Monica's Cathedral in Stone Town
“Just wait here,” says Nicholas, as he gently pushes us through the door into the women and children’s chamber. I stand there, trying to look through the gloom. I take a small step to my right and for a split second am more scared than I have ever been in my life. I bumped into a set of chains hanging from the wall and the sound stopped my heart. I couldn’t think. I was as if I’d been transported into another world. All of a sudden, the stories Nicholas and other Zanzibari people had told us about slave trading became all too real.
This chain was used to shackle 10 people in an underground cavern
The slave trade was technically abolished in Zanzibar in 1873, when the British threatened to bomb the island. But men, women and children from East Africa and Angola continued to be trafficked through Zanzibar to the Middle East. Nicholas tells us business was booming and at the market in Stone Town prospective buyers could cut deals such as “buy four adults and get one child free or buy five and take two children.” The chambers beneath St Monica’s were used as holding pits, and ensured sellers got the best value for their captives.
People would be thrown into the pits - about 100 women and children in a 15 x 30 foot space - and left for three days. If they survived, they’d fetch a much higher price. The room has a wide stone bench around all the walls. I assume some people would sit there and others on the floor, but Nicholas sets me straight by explaining that the “floor” was actually the toilet and that high tide would rush into the caverns and “flush” the waste away. But high tide wasn’t every day.
Mangapwani caves, where hundreds of slaves were held before being smuggled onto waiting ships
About 20 km from Stone Town, we visit the Mangapwani cave. Climbing down the damp stairs, we nearly trip over the foot-long millipedes clinging to the mossy walls. Villagers now use the spring at the bottom of this cave for water, but the space used to be a hiding place for captured slaves after abolition. One tunnel leads all the way to town, says our guide, and another leads out to the sea. So people could be smuggled all the way onto a waiting ship without ever seeing daylight.
Beautiful island, ugly history.
Just because I’m white . . .
December 7th, 2009
Doesn’t mean I want to be your second wife. Or your Facebook friend.
Now that I’m on NTV, scores of random Kenyan men are able to look me up on Facebook. And they do. Like ten per day. They send me messages like “Can I take you out for a drink the next time I’m in Nairobi?” or “have come from a very hard task ,am just a hustler and am willing change as from next have a family of ma own cythia (sic) since i saw u ,on TV i just cant forget ya pretty face”
Of course the marriage proposals/sexual insinuations are still going strong at work and in the streets. For some reason it seems the older and fatter the man, the better a chance he thinks he has with me. I usually just reply “Does this look like second wife material?” and they usually don’t know how to reply ;o)
Kenyan characters
December 7th, 2009
Lex demonstrates the method he uses to find underground streams
Name: Lex Rutherford
Age: 86
Occupation: retired but working harder than most people one quarter his age.
I have been wanting to meet Lex since I arrived in Kenya. I saw a story in the Daily Nation my first week here about how this 86-year-old Canadian was spending his retirement digging surface wells on Kenyan farms.
We finally connected this week and he took me out to a farm in the Rift Valley. Since last year, 50 farmers have dug wells and are now using the water for drinking, cleaning, laundry, livestock and irrigation. That last thing is a big deal as most agriculture is still rainfed in Kenya and thus not so successful during a three-year drought.
Lex has been outside Garissa in Northern Kenya – a place most Kenyans find too dangerous to visit. He spent eight months living in a Maasai hut. He’s currently in debt after buying a used station wagon. Everything his organization – Shallow Wells International Management– does is thanks to his retirement savings.
He dropped me off around 6 pm after leaving Nairobi at 6:30 in the morning. I was tired. But he was busy planning his trip for the next day.
Quote of the week
December 7th, 2009
“It’s a national outrage that we should invest in education and then not be able to get the returns because of something that is so easily preventable by talking, providing information and linking young people with services.”
- Rosemary Muganda-Onyando, director of Kenya’s Centre for the Study of Adolescence.
Rosemary and I met to talk about teen pregnancy. It affects about 25% of girls under the age of 19 and is the cause of over a third of school drops outs. The government is planning to introduce a policy that would have each secondary school girl take two pregnancy tests per year in order to “reduce” the teen pregnancy rate.
Rosemary went on to say that perhaps testing for pregnancy is leaving things a little late.
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