Mango mountains and a facelift for our turbine

We’ve entered our last week here in Kenya, and that gives me mixed feelings. I kind of fell in love with the magnificent beauty of this country, although thoughts about home also warm my heart, but the weather broadcast certainly doesn’t. It’s the middle of summer here in Kenya and that means it is mango season. A fact that doesn’t go unnoticed whilst walking down the streets of Naromoru. Every twenty meters or so, you’ll find a pick-up or a mini-van, loaded with mangos, literally mountains of them. Some are tiny and sweet as candy, others humongous and with the bite of an apple.

Being the last week of our stay here, it’s a busy week. We’re frantically trying to gather more information by trying to arrange interviews with people, and the revision of the wind turbine has finally embarked. Just this Tuesday we fetched some strong guys from the neighbourhood, Dalton brought some of his own employees and we got strong ropes from the Guides&Porters – the ones who arrange mountain climbing expeditions to Mt. Kenya. The plan was to bring down the turbine, a job that we envisioned as being quite sluggish and maybe even tedious. Though with Dalton as the supervisor of the whole operation, instructing people what to do and also lending a hand where possible, the whole operation went so much quicker than we had anticipated. Within two hours from the arrival of the first helpers, the wind turbine had been lowered and was already undergoing an inspection from Dalton. He wanted to check whether the rotating parts were still aligned properly and whether they had suffered from any form of wear. Luckily the mechanical part was in great shape, thus the only thing we needed to do was to refurbish the blades by giving them a new paintjob and replacing the weather-beaten wood of the tailfin, the component that directs the turbine to face the wind. After some sanding and applying a few layers of paint, this is the result.

The main goal of the wind turbine will now be that it will function as a show model for RIWIK’s future wind turbine producers and customers, whilst providing the HSHC guesthouse with power for the lighting. So that is the most important reason that we’re giving the turbine a facelift. Moreover we’re also putting RIWIK’s logo on the tailfin, for evident reasons. We even stayed up till late, which clearly got the better of one of us.

Since it will become a showcase, lots of people will stop by to check out the turbine and to understand the way it functions. That is why we have worked on clearing up the electronics and putting them on a wooden board on the wall. This will hopefully mean that people will understand the functioning of the electronics a bit better. People don’t have to exactly know what happens inside an electrical component such a charge controller or inverter – which are just big black boxes full of electronics – because neither do we. But understanding the general principle is sufficient. We added an electrical circuit drawing in order to make it as clear as it can be. It labels the components, and states their purpose. Moreover, every wire is colour-coded for clarity. Our goal was to make it presentable and understandable. We hope we have achieved that. The batteries that were present here at the HSHC don’t have the capacity to light all the rooms in the guesthouse decently, so we’ve purchased some brand new batteries to add to the system. 

The inverter – one of the big black boxes of electronics, which convert the DC battery power to usable AC power – didn’t function after all. We’ve done some rigorous testing and it’s just so unreliable and malfunctions most of the times. That is why we arranged a new inverter, one similar to the one we used to test a few weeks ago. But good luck isn’t on our side when it comes to inverters. When we hooked up the inverter to our new set of batteries, it started working fine the first minutes, though not long after that: smoke and the pungent odor of burnt electronics. So the guy from whom we were buying the inverter, who was deliberately present during testing, took it with him again to try and fix it. When we examined the inside we could see that some transistors were blackened, so he’s doing his best to replace these as soon as possible. Though the following day when he returned with the inverter with the replaced components, we did the same test again, and poof! Smoke and bright flashes of light came from the black casing. Exactly the same that had happened the first time happened once more. So today he left to Nairobi with the inverter to see the guy who makes these devices. We just hope that we will have everything working before we leave the guesthouse.

Tomorrow will be the day that we will erect the wind turbine so I hope that everything will work out tomorrow and maybe when we get lucky and there will be some wind so that we can test everything. So fingers crossed!

While I and Anne-Thomas are busy with DIY-ing: drilling, sawing, sanding, painting, soldering, hammering and doing some more painting, Erik is still busy with our market research. It took multiple attempts, but he wanted an interview with the county development officer, and eventually he got it. Furthermore, he is constantly occupied with trying to interview the future customers of Dalton, which is quite tricky, since Dalton is a businessman with a tight schedule. So appointments are cancelled or postponed. Though it’s going really good, as he gets to speak most of the people he wants to, which requires quite some stamina.

I’ll quickly report back on how the erecting of the turbine went, and I’ll be sure to add some photos.

Love and greetings from all of us.

Our Mount Kenya adventure

On the morning of Friday the 13th we began our four-day journey to climb Mt. Kenya. Our team consisted of members of the ecotourism group, the wind turbine group and one member of the group who is doing a project in Nairobi. So to be exact; our group consisted of Martijn, Harm, Jorinde, Ellen, Anne-Thomas and myself. We had arranged to be assisted by five porters – who would be carrying our backpacks, food and other supplies – a cook and a guide. Due to a power cut, our cook who was out buying the groceries was tardily since the cash register didn’t work without electricity. So we waited and finally we were ready to go and arrived at the gate of the national park at around three. Our adventure could begin.

After a short walk of about three hours we arrived at our stop for that night, a camp consisting of mountain cabins called Met. Station, since there is a meteorological institute close by. The porters had their lucky day, as just a short while after we had left the gate, a car passed us, and they were able to drop our backpacks in the car. The caretaker of the meteorological institute was both the supplier of firewood, and thus not long after arriving we warmed our hands, which had cooled in the mountain air, near a crackling fire. Our cook even prepared some popcorn for us, alongside with a cup of hot chocolate. We ate dinner, which was a lot more extended than we had imagined we would get during this trip, and retired for the night quite early.

The night had been cold, and we had another elaborate meal for breakfast, pancakes, eggs, toast and some fruit, and we left early for our second hike to Mackinder’s camp where we would be spending our following night. This route was a bit more challenging than the first day, and took us through a thick forest and over bushy highlands. We had a nice picnic for lunch and underneath the warm sun, we walked at a steady pace towards our destination. We arrived at Mackinder’s Camp, which is situated on the edge of a valley on an altitude of 4250 meters above sea level, and gives a clear view on the peaks of Mount Kenya.

We woke up at two ‘o clock in the morning and started making our way to the top – point Lenana on an altitude of 4985 meters high – around three, after a short breakfast of tea and cookies. The highest peak of Mount Kenya, the Batian, looked magnificent underneath the starry sky and the snow covered rock gleamed in the bright moonlight. We started our quest for the top walking on the edge of the valley and crossed a river, which meanders through the valley. From there on the way became steep, really steep. We had left the scenery of the valley, the grass and the shrubs growing between the stony surface, and were now as if on the surface of the moon. Nothing but gravel and rocks beneath our feet. The loose gravel meant that with every step you had to be careful not to fall down and bite the dust. With David as our guide, insisting on short breaks of five minutes or less, we ascended to the Austrian hut (4790m), our last stop before attempting to reach the top. We warmed ourselves a bit inside the hut, protected from the sheer cold and the icy wind. We wanted to be on the top at sunrise so we didn’t have much time to regain our strength. We defied the cold and commenced to our last stage, the final 95 meters. We passed frightingly steep snowy ledges and had to climb rock formations that were almost vertical. Though being able to see the sun’s rays starting to transcend the horizon warmed our hearts, figuratively and literally speaking that is. I don’t want to make this story too heroic, but everybody managed to reach to top, setting aside the freezing cold, defying the exhaustion and even sickness, which I personally think testifies of true courage and perseverance. So at sunrise, around 6:30 AM we were, to put it in the words of the notorious R Kelly, “the world’s greatest”. Putting real effort into smiling, which didn’t really succeeded as you can see for yourself, our guide David took this picture of us at the top.

Anne-Thomas had read in his Lonely Planet – some call it the holy grail of travel guides, others disagree completely – that there existed a summit circuit, which would take us around the Batian and back to Mackinder’s. Though this would take twice as much time as taking the same way back as we had came. Four of us agreed to do this, and so we split up and we – Anne-Thomas, Harm, Ellen and I - set out to do this. David, the guide I had previously mentioned, was really good at mitigating the steepness of routes and estimations of the time to get to a certain point. So when we asked him if this passage would be very steep and take very long, he was convincingly positive that it wouldn’t be that steep and would only take four hours. To be honest, nothing was further from the truth. This summit circuit took us past steeper hills than we had climbed and was a lot further than we had anticipated. We had to cross two valleys in order to get back to Mackinder’s camp, the mountain hut where we had spent our night. When we reached the ridge which enabled us to oversee the second valley we were flabbergasted as the entire valley was filled with thick grey smoke. This came as a huge surprise, this meant that a forest fire would be ravaging the park. David thought it was unsafe to cross this valley and so we discussed our options. One was to go to the exit the park at another gate, but all of our porters and the two remaining team members were back at Mackinder’s, and could not be reached by mobile phone or radio, since they have no reception in the valley. The other option was going back to them, by taking the same way back we had came, so we could decide what to do next together. We decided to do the latter, because we didn’t want to split up, and hoped that we could still use the Naromoru-pass to descend from the mountain. Therefore, already being plagued by fatigue, we had to return and get back to camp the same way we had come. This was mentally and physically painful, as we had to decline from the hill we had just climbed with great effort. We carried on and after a total of 13.5 hours of hiking, during which we encountered biting winds and even some hail, we were welcomed back at Mackinder’s. Just able to have some breakfast/lunch, at half past four in the afternoon(!), we dropped our broken bodies onto our beds.

David thought it best to leave the following morning early, since the dew and the night’s cold would retain the fire. Thus, the alarm buzzer woke us at four in the morning and we started our hike back to the Naromoru gate. It took us past burned bushes and smoldering ashes, the smell of it was a bit putrid and really pierced your nose. We saw smoke on both our left and right hand side, and sometimes even the tip of a blazing fire. So we rushed down the mountain, ignoring all pain and tiredness. When we left the highlands and reached the damp forests, we knew we would be safe and so we could breathe easily now. We had breakfast at Met. Station, where we had slept the first night of our expedition; a warming cup of tea, some tomato soup with toast and even some pineapple. With our bellies filled, we set out for the final piece of our way down, the last 9 kilometers to the Naromoru gate, where a member of the HSHC would be waiting to pick us up and bring us back to the guesthouse. With the end in sight, we could walk relaxed and were able to have some good conversation and joke a bit. On our way down, we had seen loads of people going up the mountain, all with the aim of putting out the fire, maybe a little ignorant, especially because most of them didn’t carry any equipment at all, though I truly admire their optimism. When we arrived at the gate, we even saw a helicopter, which was put to use in order to extinguish the fire. Moreover we heard that the big boss, the director of the managing organization of the Kenyan national parks, had come down from Nairobi to do whatever was in his power to help.

Tired but satisfied we got back to the guesthouse and enjoyed a warm shower – ignorant  of the fact that we couldn’t shower all at the same time, because the water supply isn’t capable of handling six showers in one go – we did it anyway. We had a nice meal together and exchanged stories with the ones that had remained at the guesthouse and had a laugh. Everybody was glad to be ‘home’ again. So that concludes our Mount Kenya adventure.

Love and greetings from all of us.

Sandy shores and cheap Vodka

Goodbye holiday spirit, welcome back Naromoru. Christmas holidays are over, and we’ve just returned to our guesthouse in Naromoru after two weeks of sandy beaches and the dry arid lands of Masai-land.

After having put up a Christmas tree, saying goodbye to Hanna and having packed our bags, it was time for us to leave as a Matatu-taxi was waiting outside the gate to take us to Nairobi. Holidays had started. Not long after that, we were lying in the grass of the city park and doing some serious chilling. Though after a few hours, we packed up our backpacks and got going towards the direction of the train station, since a once-a-day train would take us to our holiday destination on the Kenyan coast; Mombasa. It was quite an experience going to the coast a seventeen hour during train ride, having dinner in a train, seeing the sunrise in Tsavo National Park and spotting all kinds of wildlife whilst hanging outside your window with the cool morning breeze in your not so wakeful face.

Since we didn’t have so much delay, we arrived at Mombasa train station in the early afternoon, giving us ample time to go and see the city. We started with dumping our backpacks in our €3-hostel, taking a quick cold shower, and taking of the many tuktuk’s, which crowd the streets, to Fort Jesus. A strategically placed fortress erected by the Portuguese to solidify their dominion in the waters south of the Horn of Africa, but actually and ironically switched owners a multitude of times after being built. From Fort Jesus we commenced our tour through the old city centre, which took us past a cliff view on the bay, the old harbour and some alleys that could have also be found on the Arabian Peninsula. We also went for the full pull touristic experience and dived into of the markets to do some good souvenir shopping. It resulted in buying some super cool real RenPinÒ - a name which looks a lot like a well-known brand of sunglasses, when you’re looking at it from a 10 meter distance - sunglasses. After this stroll around town, we went back to our hostel, took another cold shower and went to dinner and ate way to much of something we’d missed so much during our stay in Kenya: Kebab. With our bellies filled, we oversaw the still busy traffic from the roof of our hostel with a tropical soda in the hand and enjoying the cool midnight breeze, taking away the warmth of the summer evening.

The following morning we took some tuktuk’s to take us to the ferry, because the sunny shores of Diani Beach, south of Mombasa town were our destination. Between a massive crowd of people and cars we were taken to the other side of the southern bay. From thereon we again took some tuktuk’s to take us to the campsite where we’re going to stay to celebrate Christmas. Our stay consisted of a repeating day-to-day structure of getting up, lounging on the beach, drinking and partying and starting that cycle with waking up again. We really let ourselves go and unleashed the tourist and the student inside us. We didn’t really do much, except for laid back watching of camel races on the beach, some dolphin spotting, snorkeling, drinking coconut wine and getting an almost lethal sunburn. Though we did immensely enjoy the breathtaking beauty of the beaches and the great weather. The last evening we celebrated Ellen’s birthday in a bar called Forty Thieves, so the next day when we had a terrible hangover, which is really great when you’re sitting in a bumpy matatu back to Mombasa or on an airplane back to Nairobi. Though we survived and arrived just in time for dinner – spaghetti – at the apartment of our friends from Delft in Nairobi.

Scheduled for the next week was a intercultural course on traditional cultures of Kenya, and discussing the cultural aspect of our internships with a group of Kenyan students. The course was to take place in a small town called Oltepesi, which is situated in the middle of the Kenyan part of Masai-land, southern of the one railway in Kenya. As two students already prepared us for what to expect there – a whole lot of nothing in the middle of nowhere – we brought some cheap Vodka.

The course was not really what we had expected, and a little disappointing: the Kenyan students from whom we expected feedback on our project didn’t give us much to work with, the cultural seminars were not more than can be found on Wikipedia and discussions on the future of and development of Kenya were too swiftly truncated. Though getting to know the Kenyan students was fun, and we were also surprised by the prejudices among the Kenyan people, concerning the different tribes. These tribal issues already caused a lot of commotion during the previous elections and also aroused a lot of angry reactions among the Kenyan students. We expected that ‘learned’ individuals were better at putting aside tribal issues and looking at the greater good and the future of Kenya, but nothing was further from the truth. Prejudices flew across the table and heated discussions followed. Erik put it nicely by saying it looked as if it was a tennis match, where the action goes from left to right and your head is constantly drawn from left to right.

What was cool by the way was that we climbed the nearest hilltop, which was a good exercise and gave us a great view on the highest mountain on the African Continent, the Kilimanjaro. This snowcapped giant separates the Kenyan side of the Serengeti from the Tanzanian part. Our new year’s eve was nothing like we’re used to in Holland, since we just had a camp fire and some drinks. Another thing that was quite special was experiencing the ritual slaughtering of a sheep. It not only entails killing the animal, but our Masai neighbour was really quick with his cup when he found out we were slaughtering a sheep. The mug was, bear with me now, to drink the fresh, warm blood from the sheep. Some brave people also tried this, which provided us with some nice pictures.

On our way back from Oltepesi we once again stayed overnight at our friends' appartment in Nairobi. But since we wouldn't be seeing them anymore during our remaining days here in Kenya and to celebrate our holiday together, we went to dinner at a restaurant called the Carnivore. The name already gives away most of the experience, but here what it comes down to: people coming by your table with giant pieces of meat on  a skewer. For a fixed price you can eat as much as you can, and when your finished you have to lower the flag that is on your table and surrender. It was loads of fun and a good way to conclude our time together. This also provided some great pictures, but one in particular, so see for yourself.

Being back in Naromoru means starting again with our project and today we met Dalton and talked about his potential customers and about us interviewing them for the purpose of our market research. We’ve also discussed the future purpose of the wind turbine, but to our disappointment the produced electricity will probably be used to provide the guesthouse with electricity, and not a nobler goal which we envisioned when we were back in the Netherlands. We brought the batteries to a shop for a Charge&Check, of which especially the checking is important to know the condition of the batteries. Moreover we’ve picked up another inverter of which we definitely know that it’s working, in order to test our system here at the HSHC. So we’re back in business, and I think I’m going to leave it at that for know.

Love and greetings from all of us,