Wildlife of Kenya

Horned wildlife in Kenya.

Impala bucks

Water Buffalo of Kenya. In the background are pink flamingos and pelicans.

These photos were taken some years back on a trip to the Lake Nakuru National Park.

I'm signing off with a very heartwarming video about unlikely friendships between animals.
I hope you enjoy it.
Watching it I was reminded of how the animals one lived lived together in peace with all other animals and with early humans in the Garden of Eden.
I believe that one day the animals will be able to live like that again.

Joining up with Eileen

at 

Saturday's Critters

Have an awesome week ahead.

Season of Completing

Like many people I have projects and tasks that get started or envisioned but take time to finish due to distractions or other priorities.

This past week and a few days I've turned my mind to trying to finish a few things. I didn't completely finish but I made good progress on: reading, knitting and paperwork.

This beautiful coffee table book below is a book about famous gardens in Paris. I read about several of the gardens though if I ever get to Paris I'm sure I'd be hard pressed to remember what I read. I'm so used to seeing English gardens (which I absolutely love) on television or in books and I wanted to broaden my horizons a bit by reading about French gardens.

Author: Zahid Zardar, Photographer: Marion Brenner

Here are just a very few photos. Of course they look much better in the beautiful book.

Monet's garden

Rooftop garden

While I was catching up on watching several recorded television shows I wanted to make use of my hands.  I decided to use up some small bits and pieces of yarn left over from my winter of knitting dishcloths by making a few "crazy" dishcloths.  I call them crazy because I just use up the yarn and join them together when I no longer have matching or complementary yarns to use in the completion of one cloth.  The cloths are only being used to wash my dishes not as gifts so it will only be me that sees them. I really enjoy using cotton knitted dishcloths a lot and go through a fair number of them each year. I also use them for cleaning around the house especially in the bathrooms.


In others indoor tasks, I've made ever so slight progress on sorting through paperwork. The 3 bags of paper that are in the photo have been sorted once (there is even more paper as I also have mom's paperwork to go through). They need much more sorting before I can decide which ones need keeping and which ones can be destroyed. This kind of work is my least favourite thing and I not only have my own paperwork to sort but I have my mom's too. I do procrastinate in this area just because there is so much of it that needs mental work and I have a multitude of things to distract me.

This photo captures about a third of what I have to sort and organize.

It's good to take a break from paperwork after a few hours so I went off to a festival and spent several hours of enjoyment there.

The festival was organized by people of African descent and I think (and hope) it will be the first of it's kind in Vancouver. It was a bit on the small side in terms of food offerings and stalls with arts and crafts or information but it was a good first start. There was a band stand with various entertainers throughout the time I was there and a handful of stalls selling African goods and food.

 

You can see the sign "Central" in the background. That is the train station where you catch the train to Seattle. It is also where you catch the Greyhound bus to just about anywhere or buses to Vancouver Island or Whistler where people love to go skiing.

The park in front of the train station is called Thornton Park. The organizers of the African festival selected this venue because it is very close to where the first blacks settled in Vancouver. 

Kayode Fatoba, the artistic director of the festival had this to say about Thornton Park and surrounding area in a 

"Hogan's Alley was sort of  the first settlement of African Americans who came during the gold rush" 

That alley is the unofficial name for Park Lane, a T shaped block that ran from Main and Jackson Street in between Prior and Union Streets.

 In some of their publicity the festival organizers stated their vision:

The goal of the platform for this year is to establish itself, while using the input gained to build on subsequent years. Culture and Art festivals are an amazing way to form strong bridges of which the team will look towards showcasing public art, installations, modern and traditional based showcases, night markets, crafts fair and musical performances. With a focus on rejuvenating the spirit of Hogan's Alley, this platform will work with a wide range of city groups, main street businesses, and at large Vancouver organizations to bring awareness to Vancouver’s prominent and growing African community!

These women must sit for hours and hours to have their hair done like this.

Headline singer from Nigeria. Too bad most of the crowd had gone home by then.

Musicians listening to other musicians.

Booth with goods from Ghana in foreground, other counties in background

 

I love how this man is listening so intently to the elderly woman.

I like this red print dress. Very pretty on the dark skin.

 

This seller came all the way from Edmonton, Alberta

This young lady, Desiree Dawson won an award for talent. She is an awesome vocalist.

I spoke to the vendor of this booth who has these sandals beaded by the Maasii women in Kenya.

These sandals were $45. Canadian a pair. Not bad when you consider the extremely high cost of postage that must be paid to ship things to Kenya and back.

 For my dinner I had injera with beef sauce and some kind of vegetarian sauce (I think yellow peas) and some cabbage and carrots along with a bit of yogurt. I have had similar dishes and I like it very much but I do not like the injera once the hot food has made it soggy. I prefer the "dry" injera around the edges.

Here is me relaxing in my zebra print maxi dress.

Shortly after I took the photo of myself, I met some people from Morocco and Ethiopia. It was fun meeting them and they were very interesting. The young woman I started talking to first was Moroccan and she was speaking Hebrew with an Ethiopian woman.
It turns out they both met in Israel which was also fascinating. I spent a very enjoyable time talking to them, and the Moroccan woman's father who immigrated to Canada in 1968 and her boyfriend who is Canadian but has travelled to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and spent time doing some humanitarian work there.

All in all I enjoyed the festival.

I look forward to seeing it again in years to come.

 I also love the accessible location and think it is a prime location to attract a larger crowd once more people become aware of it.

Linking up with Our World Tuesday.

African Arts and Crafts

Thank you and welcome to P-ter for the recent follow ;-)

It's been awhile since I've posted about my travels to Kenya. I do have several more posts before I conclude the series. I thought rather than show you more travels today, I would instead focus on some of my purchases. It was the first time I'd purchased so much at once and I love all my purchases.

Candlesticks made of ebony wood. I think they are beautiful but I found it difficult to find candles to fit the base. In the end I purchased votive candles and cut down the bottoms to fit.

A pair of elephants carved from ebony wood.

Soapstone carvings. I love the globe sitting on the base.

A game to play. I think it is called "Solitaire" and is like playing checkers except you play yourself.

A close up of the game board.

Soapstone plate and zebra mask. 

Same zebra mask and a different soapstone plate. 

Some calabashes. First time I saw them tinted dark. I purchased these on the highway on the journey from Marigat.

A drum. I was told this drum is not actually a Kenyan drum but comes from Tanzania.

This drum is a Kenyan drum.

Soapstone carving.  Map of Mount Longonot and other areas.  Click photo to get a better view.

Maasai wedding necklace.

I hope you enjoy the art. Please check out my travel posts on Kenya. You can find some links here.

Jiko Stove Project - Phase 2, Final Installment

The second phase of the Jiko Stove Project in Rift Valley Kenya is nearing completion.  We are making stoves in the villages of Chepkurbet, Anamoi, Kapcheptoror (5 miles from Kericho Town) and Kimilot which is inside the tea estate about 20 miles from Kericho Town.

As I mentioned in  my last post here, we have not had to supervise Emily and Regina who are making the stoves.  Yet these two women have gone beyond the call of duty, making beautiful stoves and even teaching the other women how to take care of their jikos.

Now the rest of these  photos below will show you the latter phases of the work.  Some of the pictures were taken at night so they are a bit dark but they will more than give you an idea about how well this project has gone.

This is a new stove that is in the process of curing (drying and being readied for baking).

Another angle of the stove.

The majority of stoves were made in Chepkurbet for the village women there and last time I checked in, Emily and Regina were on their third day of stove making for the widows in Anamoi. The balance of stoves will be made in the other villages and altogether this part of the project will see 35 stoves completed. In the first phase of the project which occurred about one and a half years ago, we were able to make 11 jiko stoves.  If you like, you can read more about that here.

A small child who will benefit from the reduced smoke emissions of this stove.

All the children in this household who will benefit from reduced smoke and reduced labour to collect firewood.

We are now able to get to more women and families with the jiko stoves. Not all of the women recipients of the stove are widows. Some of them have husbands. The thing they all have in common is that they need a new stove to help them with the environmental and health risks associated with the three stone fires they had been using. Read more about that here. For humble villagers like these to put in such a stove would be quite costly and also viewed as a luxury item.  While it might be financially doable for some it is likely at the expense or risk of not providing food and education for the children and other family members. Food is a necessity for people who often only get one meal a day and education would be considered far more valuable than a jiko stove.

Here is the mother. Just think how much better her daily cooking experience will be. Thank you God!

A fire is lit.

Another family benefits from the jiko.

A mother and her child with the new jiko.

This is an older type of jiko stove that at least one village woman had. You can see that it is an improvement over a stone fire but it is not energy efficient. Smoke and heat still escapes from the top. In a new jiko model the smoke is funnelled to the outside of the home and the stove would need less wood to keep a fire going due to energy efficiency.

I want to say one thing about the husbands also. Generally in Kenya, the men do not associate themselves so much with the concerns of the kitchen or the hardships of cooking. These areas of home life fall under the responsibility of women.  Consequently, I was very happy to hear how as a result of this project, some of the husbands are actively engaged and supportive of these new stoves and that they value them as an advantage for their wives and their households. You will see one of the husbands posing in the photos. You can see he is smiling and proud to have a new jiko stove.

One husband who so appreciates the stove for his family.

This concludes my series on Phase 2 of the Jiko Stove Project. Phase 3 will happen when I get to Kenya. You can read about that in the weeks to come.

Chepkurbet Jiko Stove Project Continues (Part 3)

Hello readers and friends,

I began telling you about the Jiko Stove Project awhile back. If you would like to read more please look here and here.

You will remember perhaps that my friend Pastor Jonah hired two local women, Emily and Regina to make the jiko stoves. These women are so passionate about making the stoves and they do it with a lot of joy and gusto. They have to be strong to make these stoves but they are also very creative and I am so pleased and happy that they have been able to help us out in making this project come to life. 

Emily and Regina are working very hard on behalf of all the women in the villages.  They have worked so tirelessly and they have worked with gusto despite not being supervised. They have also taken it upon themselves to teach the other women how to care for these stoves. It is a true pleasure to have them working on this project and to see them take on the making of the stoves as their own project. The widow woman in the top photo wearing the blue t-shirt is Mrs. Irene Songony, the recipient of this particular stove.

Here you see the two ladies pounding the soil that will ultimately become the new stove.

Here the ladies are smoothing out what will become the bottom end of the new stove.

Here is a look at one of the new stoves. See how the ladies have made some decorative edges all around. they have also created shelves at the back of the stove.

A clearer view of the stove.

Here is a close up of the stove. You can see the spaces for the firewood and also see that the stove top has two holes for cooking pots. Both holes need to be covered even if you are only using one. Chances are you need two pots to boil water. One for tea and one for cooking the food.

The Jiko Stove project continues. We have a few stoves to make in a handful of villages but most of them will be made in Chepkurbet. I pray these stoves would be a wonderful blessing to the women and their families.  I praise God we can help widows through this project. May God abundantly bless them and help all the widows we are helping so that their life can be as God intended for them.  I hope to share some final pictures with you soon and a few words about the impact of this project on the husbands, in my next and final instalment in this series on the Jiko Stove Project.

I hope you are enjoying this project as much as I've enjoyed sharing about it. Please pray for these women who are building the stoves. Pray that they would be blessed beyond measure and that the recipients of the stoves will also feel a great blessing from God.

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world. James 1:27