Saturday, May 15, 2010

May 12, 2010 - Wednesday

We got up at 5:30 am and walked down to the main guest house for breakfast, scheduled for 6 am. We didn't actually eat until after 6:30 as it was difficult for the guest house staff to arrive so early. We arrived at Cheptiret a little after 7 am and the roads were too bad for the bus to attempt to drive down, so we walked. We were told of a short-cut...not so much, but it was much less muddy. We went back through part of the village of Cheptiret and along some paths, through a small part of a farm field and to the main entrance to St. Catherine's with a teacher leading the way. On the way we saw multiple dogs and I was very surprised at how seemingly domesticated they were. Since being knocked over by a large dog when I was a kid, I've been fairly nervous around strange dogs, especially those roaming around wherever, so multiple times I was really trying to avoid random dogs and using my classmates as protection so I wasn't the one who got bit (sorry guys!). One pair we saw was pretty menacing looking and appeared to be stuck together at the butt. Scott said when he was walking past them they were going at it when another dog showed up to fight with the male over the female and in the course of that, the two got stuck together. So no one got bit and we got to see more picturesque views before getting to the job site about 7:30 am.

From Kenya 2010
From Kenya 2010

Tank with the gravel layer in:
From Kenya 2010

We got to work immediately again, this time focusing on sieving of sand. I quickly learned it would kill my back and make me completely useless the rest of the trip so I switched to washing coarse sand once there was enough to do so. We also had the help of several Moi students, of whom I can only remember a few names. We worked until at least 10, maybe even 11 before tea and a snack arrived. The following are the only pics I've got remaining from Wednesday as I was focused on working.

From Kenya 2010
From Kenya 2010
From Kenya 2010
From Kenya 2010

The rains came around 2 pm, but we worked through them by having everyone washing sand. The Kenyans, as is their custom, stopped working in the rain unless they had an umbrella. We asked them about that and they just said that's what they do. We definitely wanted to join them in a break, but we were determined to have an operational filter before we left so we kept plugging along. Late in the afternoon, a cement mixer showed up and several guys started using it to pre-wash the fine sand. It helped immensely, cutting the hand washing time significantly. To wash the sand by hand, we put a little sand in a bucket then added water. Swirled it around, let sit for a 5 second count, then poured off the supernatant that was full of clay and silt. We did this until the water being poured off was only slightly cloudy, with non-pre-washed sand needing at least 8 washes in this manner. This work continued until it was time to leave. Again, we had to walk back to the bus. One of our members was wearing sandals and was walking much slower than the rest of us.

We got back to the bus but Eugenia was not behind the last to show up and we definitely became concerned that we had accidentally walked past her and she was out there by herself. Bruce and Jeff, along with one of the Moi students, went back along the path we came. I gave Scott a call after they hadn't come back in a while. Fortunately, right after I called Scott we saw Eugenia and a Moi student walking from up the road as they had taken a different path. Bruce and Jeff returned only minutes later and we all hopped on the bus and headed back to campus for dinner. We arrived early enough that we had an opportunity to clean up. We definitely took advantage, and at our house had hot water too.

After dinner, we had a meeting/discussion with four gentlemen from Africa who had spent the last few weeks with Megan Sapp-Nelson of Purdue. Three of them were native Kenyans and one from Rwanda. Timothy, a professor of history, gave us a brief overview of Kenyan history and politics. Kaka, a professor of film, also contributed to the history and asked us questions on popular films. Jonathan, a lecturer of sociology and the youngest, contributed to the history and offered his opinions on politics. The gentleman from Rwanda, whose name I cannot recall, didn't speak all that much but did offer a comparison to Rwanda and Kenya in regards to politics and corruption.

We had an outstanding conversation for over 2 hours ranging from history to politics to Avatar. The first part consisted of Timothy providing a short history lesson with the other gentlemen chiming in with their thoughts and other tidbits of history and politics. Questions arose from this, mostly the political side with them having recent election violence, an upcoming major election with a change to their constitution on the table and the corruption that pervades much of Africa. They then asked us our impressions of Africa, agriculture comparisons, and about Avatar.

We got fairly passionate about the Avatar question. Kaka wanted our perspective on why it made so much money. From the way he asked, it was clear to me that he thought it was a crap movie and he was really curious to know why we thought such a badly written movie could make so much money. We answered that it was the visuals, and it certainly is worth seeing for that. Avatar is a visually stunning work, but the screenplay is just awful, trite, one-dimensional, unoriginal and wooden. Katie, who like many of us, is passionate about conservation was slightly upset with others' characterizations of the movie (I said it was awful) and expressed that the message was important. We do agree that that is important, however we don't agree on the quality of how that message was delivered.

We wrapped up the discussion a little after 10 pm and headed off to our rooms. We walked back to the house with four people from Moi. They again stayed the night to ensure we were ok and nothing happened to us, which was great and yet still disconcerting. We stayed up a little while talking about the plan for Thursday, which was going to be a shorter day and we still had some coarse sand to get into the filter and all of the fine sand. Little did we know just how short that day was going to actually be and how fortunate we would be mid-morning.

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