Day 11

Hey what’s up, it’s Ajay again, feeling a whole lot better.

Over the weekend, we finished the majority of the 2DR surveys but Tom and Heather decided to redo the long measurement that was done in Miranga. Sriram and Julia left with them in the morning to help them out while Jared, Tristen, and myself stayed back, debating shock-chlorinating the two tanks that we tested positive for E. coli and other coliforms. On one hand, we knew that our experiment the previous day that measured a 0.2 residual of chlorine ended up being okay for the students to feel comfortable drinking. But we also knew that the local hospital in Miranga reported no cases of waterborne illnesses from drinking harvested rainwater. We decided to go ahead and join the rest of the team in Miranga to start shock-chlorination. As we were getting ready to measure the tank volumes in order to supply the appropriate amount of chlorine to each tank, Julia stormed over to Tristen with a bone to pick. She stomped across the field and complained that he didn't take enough pictures of her and too many of the cows-- "Photograph me like one of your  Kenyan cows, Tristen!" So, she decided to have a little photoshoot with Tristen and Sriram while they waited for the 2DR to finish up! Yeah… with such great outdoor lighting, we all sort of joined in on the photoshoot, with a romantic Titanic shot from Sriram and Julia.

Anyway, it started to rain just as they finished the 2DR measurements and started wrapping up all the cables, so we decided to wait to chlorinate the tanks. And good thing too because we narrowly escaped the ensuing MASSIVE downpour. Heading back to the guesthouse to interpret these new results, we decided to kick back and start a Harry Potter marathon!

I never thought, in a billion years, that I would be sitting in a Kenyan village watching The Philosopher’s Stone.

Bye for now!

Day 10

Everyone was up early today, excited to visit Java House for another American meal. I think we are all ready to have Java for the rest of the trip. We had John drive us into Kisumu and let him roam the city while we prepared for several meetings at Java.

After ordering our coffees and smoothies we had our first meeting with Evans, a representative from Water Is Life. We were hoping he would bring a prototype of The Drinkable Book, which comes in a 3D printed case and has pages that act as filters. It would be awesome if we could get our hands on a few for the Kolunje community, but unfortunately they are still in development. Instead we had to settle for the filtration straw and bucket he brought, which were still pretty cool.

Next to walk in was Ryan, who is an engineer from America living in Kenya and working for the NGO, Innovations for Poverty Action (not to mention he also has a striking resemblance to Benedict Cumberbatch). We informed him about our project over croissants and mocha lattes, and also learned about his Kenyan experience. Living here for a year, he’s gotten used to the interesting way of life, using the local tuk tuks, botas, and mutatus to get around. He and his coworkers don’t even take malaria pills anymore, because to them it’s like getting the Flu, and easily treatable.

Finishing lunch, he travelled with us back to Kolunje, as we were all eager to show him in person what we have been doing in the community. The first stop was back at the guest house, where Christine made us eat even more food for lunch. None of us wanted to stuff ourselves further, but you don’t disobey Christine. She’ll cane you with a fresh stick.

Christine packed the left overs for us to bring to Heather and Tom, after which we headed to Lunga. Today they were running the 2D resistivity tests at Lunga Primary School, which they set up along 1200 feet of hillside. Throughout the day Heather had to protect the line from curious goats and children, but eventually recruited the children as her little helpers. We introduced Ryan to the 2D resistivity equipment, and then made our way to Miranga Secondary School.  Ryan specializes in water treatment and quality, so he was able to aid us in experimentally figuring out how much chlorine is needed to shock chlorinate the tanks. A few of the tanks have E. Coli in them, along with plenty of other unknown bacteria. It’s important that we add just enough chlorine to kill any organic material in the tank, but not so much that the school kids will taste chlorine and not drink the water. Through some makeshift chemistry with water jugs and bleach, we figured out a correct amount and plan on chlorinating the tanks tomorrow. In order to prove the water is now safe to drink, Jared and Tristen both acted as test dummies today, filled their Nalgenes, and drank in front of the school.     

Around 5 storm clouds began to gather, and it was time for Ryan to head back to Kisumu.  We drove him to the nearest town so he could catch a mutatu, and then made our way back to the guest house to relax for the rest of the day. We started watching the first Harry Potter movie. Maybe, if there's time, we can get through the whole series before the trip ends.

Day 9

Hey everyone, it’s Julia again! Today was a busy day as we had to go run some errands in Kisumu. We brought along Christine with us as she convinced us that because we are Mzungus, we wouldn’t get fair prices for the fruits. We also brought Julie along for the trip into the city, and we spent the car ride to Kisumu getting to know her a little better. She seemed to be very much on the same page as us with pop culture, and we came to the conclusion that Justin Bieber is hated globally (though we both agreed that his new songs are catchy).

Once we got to Kisumu the first thing we did was go to a farmers market to buy some oranges and bananas—the breakfast staples to our survival in Kenya. While Christine was doing the fruit haggling, a woman running a stand really, really, really wanted us to buy some of her sweet melons. I think we said no thank you about 100 times and she still kept asking us to buy her melons. We went to a lady to purchase oranges, which were KSH 120 per kg. When the lady asked for KSH 650 for 5 kgs of oranges, Christine responded with, “My dear, 120 * 5 is 600. Not 650. I’m afraid you are terribly wrong.” Christine’s really good with her math, whereas we engineers were sitting and pondering what 120*5 actually was.

When we were done with the fruit buying, we went to the Nakumatt to buy some basic necessities such as toilet paper, paper towels, and ice cream. We also needed to buy some household bleach to shock chlorinate the tanks at the school. When Julie and Christine saw what we would be using to treat the schools water with they accused us of wanting to poison them. It took some explaining to get them to trust that we were not actually poisoning the school children because the amount of bleach would be minimal.

By the time we were done shopping, we were hungry for lunch. Julie called her friend who was from Kisumu to see what good places there were to eat, to which her friend said “lol this isnt Nairobi.” So, we wandered a bit and walked into a mall (questionable?) food court. There we had about 6 people at once trying to get us to go eat at their restaurant. Considering that all of the places looked like another Pankies, we pretty much said “nope” and decided on eating at a Java House at a new mall near the area.

When we walked in we realized what kind of place we just entered—an over-glorified Starbucks with a full menu…it was perfect. I don’t think I could have contained my excitement to have been eating a guacamole bacon cheeseburger and drinking a fancy hot mocha. I felt right at home, and I know the others did too as we were all ecstatic to have found a place to relieve us a bit from our homesickness. Julie said our excitement made her realize that she was taking Java House for granted.

After a really good lunch, we went back to Miranga Primary school to help Tom and Heather wrap up the 2DR cables. Tristen took this as an opportunity to climb a huge tree. Once he started having problems climbing up the tree, we realized it would be a huge problem getting down the tree—and it was. Jared, Julie, and I used this moment as a team building exercise—with all of us setting ourselves up to work as a prop for Tristen to stand on and jump from the tree with.  Meanwhile, Sriram was filming this glorious (yet painful) team building activity, and Ajay sat in the car refusing to help because he was eating a Java House Burrito (too good to leave). After we helped Tristen get down from the tree, Sri-mom and I scolded him and reminded him how we signed liability waivers.

By this point in the day, we were all exhausted but happy. After cleaning up the 2DR tests, we all went home for a nice relaxing night. I can’t wait to see what else is in store for us tomorrow!

Day 8

Hey, Jared here! We’re just about halfway through the trip now and today was pretty simple. Tristen went with Tom and Heather this morning to Lunga Polytechnic for 2DR surveying. Sriram, Ajay, Julia and I slept in a bit before going to Miranga to check on the contractor’s work. While we waited around we took some pictures of each other and got a lesson in Swahili from Henry. We learned that “Naomba maji” is “I want water.” After that Henry allowed Ajay to teach the students some more about physics. This time the lesson went a little better. We were also able to teach the class a bit about water safety. The students knew about WaterGuard to clean their water and said that they use their water mainly for drinking, cleaning, cooking, and bathing.

The lesson seemed like it was going great, up until Julia was summoned out of the room.  She came back inside quickly, and told us to look outside. Upon opening the door we quickly regretted it because what we saw was the entire school, having brought chairs outside, sitting in a large semi-circle. Our tiny lesson became a lesson to the entire school. I recorded it as Ajay, Sriram and Julia went over the water safety lesson again. We still don’t understand why whenever we speak the children just laugh at us half the time. For example, after showing petri dishes of some of the water samples we took around, we all introduced ourselves. Once again, everyone loved Julia, but upon saying his name, students burst into laughter over Sriram. And when I introduced myself there was another bout of laughter, presumably because I didn’t do anything besides record the entire time.

After that we went to check on the rest of the team over in Lunga. Since they still had tests to run and there were kids playing in the field in front the school, Sriram, Julia, and I saw it as an opportunity for some exercise. We played soccer with the kids and even our driver, John, joined in. Julia and Sriram had some difficulty, kicking it into the street a few times, but we all had fun nonetheless. When the test was over we said bye to the kids so we could wrap up the cables and head back to the guest house.

Dinner once again introduced new food experiences for many on the team. Christine cooked up the normal meals once again, this time including whole stewed tilapia. Tristen and I each took a head. Having eaten fish heads multiple times, I felt pretty comfortable dismantling the head and cleaning out all the meat. Tristen, however, had some difficulty.  Christine applauded him for his efforts, but said his fish head should look more like mine. Meanwhile, this only furthered Julia’s vegetarianism. As dinner ended some more of James' family arrived from Nairobi - his eldest daughter and her daughter, Julie, as well as his 2nd youngest son, Moses, and his family. They too are very warm and welcoming. 

That pretty much sums up our day. Goodnight, Kenya. 

Day 7

Salaamu all, Sriram here! Today was a big day for our team. After much discussion with Elvis, our new contractor, we finally signed the contract today. It was a full-out official event with the students, mentors, WatSan officials, Gregory, the school principal, and Elvis all surrounding a large table filled with signatures, handshakes, and smiles. As part of the school’s usual courtesy, everyone was offered a soft drink at the end of the meeting­—and this time, I was smart enough to politely decline, instead of secretly dumping my soda and getting caught like last time.

Meanwhile, our bodyguard, Jared, and Tom were busy with pumping water from one of the concrete tanks into the other tanks. This is where Jared truly proved worthy of his bodyguard title. Using a handmade wooden ladder, literally a ladder that could break at any second for any amount of weight, Jared climbed to the top of multiple tanks. Even though the ladder shook vigorously and could snap any moment, he successfully laid across the top so that he could hold the pump into the tank. This did involve getting splashed a lot, making it seem like Jared fell into the tanks, but all was well as Kenya’s heat dried him instantly like a towel. With all the excess water we had from the tank we were pumping, we were able to make the villagers very happy as we gave out hundreds of liters of free water. You could quickly see everyone’s smiles because they were relieved of the stress of walking several kilometers to obtain a few liters of water for one day.

Celebrating our victory with the contract signing, pumping of water, and making the villagers happy by giving them free water, we decided to head to Kisumu to grab some lunch and finish some needed shopping.  Earlier today, Ajay contacted his Gujarati hardware store friend Hiren Mehta for recommendations of restaurants, after which we decided that we would go to the Laughing Buddha in the Tuffoam Mall. Once we got to the mall, we saw that everything was closed……even though it was a perfectly sunny Thursday afternoon. So we continued our search and finally we ran into one restaurant called Pankies which seemed promising because it offered African, Indian, Italian, and American cuisines. Julia was ecstatic to order a hotdog from the menu because she was really missing American food. Jared ventured to try a burger, Tristen decided to try the savory Penne Arrabiata, and Ajay and I decided to go for some Indian food.

Here’s what came out of the kitchen…….

1. 2 plates of different paneer (cheese cube) dishes à The Indian Food
2. Shell pasta in a flavorless white sauce  with a tiny piece of toast à Penne Arrabiata with Garlic Bread
3. Tiny, cold, hard, buttered sausage in a mini sub-sandwich à Julia’s Hot Dog
4. A dry, flavorless patty between 2 odd tasting buns à Jared's burger 

The Indian food wasn’t too bad, but the other food was terrible….We laughed hysterically about the food that came out, missing home food dearly, going to the point where we cried, some of us from laughing too hard and others from actually crying. As you can see from her expression below, Julia was the most disappointed as her hot dog turned out to be a mini, frozen, buttered rod of meat.

Having enjoyed an unpleasant lunch, we went to a store to get some more jugs of water. Julia stayed behind in the car because the hot dog she barely ate made her feel ill. Apparently, while we were shopping, Julia had an old lady come and preach to her in Swahili for about 15 minutes. John came to the rescue and redirected the lady’s preaching from Julia towards himself. But, nonetheless they still had to cough up 20 shillings for her to leave them alone. They also bought some fresh sugar cane from the streets for us to try—in the time John finished an entire bag, Julia had one. When we finally got back and Julia told us her stories, we started returning home to Kolunje. We quickly got our minds off of food as we sang along and danced to the songs Jared played like Rather Be, Temperature, and the Pokemon theme song.  To make our day even better, it started raining while the sun was out, leading us to a vibrant rainbow in the sky, for which we hypothesized that instead of a leprechaun with a pot of gold, there would be a mzungu (white person) with smiles at the end of it. We reached home full of joy from the music and beautiful sky, after which Julia decided to become a model. We decided that instead of building rainwater catchment systems for the schools, we would sell our own product of the Julia Rain Catchment. She comes in three models as you can see below. Choose your favorite and place your order today!

Choose your favorite and place your order today!

Day 6: Chieng Podho

The Sunset

            Hi there, it’s Sriram, or as they call me here Sri-mom. As part of my daily mom checkup, I’m sad to say that Ajay and Julia are not feeling well again today. The heat really exhausted both of them the last few days, so today we gave them another chance to stay home and rest up again. As for our bodyguard Jared, the day started bright and early as he headed out to the Secondary School with our mentors Tom and Heather to layout and perform the 2D Resistivity test near the dry well site. 

             At around 11 AM, Tristen and I headed over to the Secondary School to meet Jared and begin contract negotiations with Elvis, our contractor, for the new repairs needed to the two systems. This was the first time any of us, Tristen, Jared, or I, had dealt with a professional contractor, but I definitely think we rocked it.  We discussed with Elvis regarding new repairs and old issues from the previous implementation trip, and did a great job standing our ground, making sure we weren’t bullied into unreasonable prices and demands. With full support from our NGO Peter Oduor, the school principal Gregory, and the WatSan secretary Simeon, we came out of the principal’s office celebrating our victory to see a very intriguing site….Heather herding school children away from the test site. With her suave talk, she successfully convinced the students to machete the grass elsewhere.    

    

                After lunch, much of the afternoon passed through with water samples being collected by Jared as Tristen and I drafted the contract and letter to our old contractor. Soon after, the 2D Resistivity test ended successfully and all of us on the field wrapped up the equipment, traversing the field for various gadgets by hanging off of the side of a car.

After the equipment left, Tristen, Jared, and I slipped down the cliff behind the Secondary School to catch chieng podho, the sunset. We followed a foliaged trail down the cliff, slashing thorny bushes, and fighting spiders and other crawling creatures. Within 10 minutes of heavy trekking through this terrain, we discovered a clear rocky trail, down to an open field with the beautiful view of chieng podho with the backdrop of Kisumu and Lake Victoria. Once down on the open field, we were spotted by local children who scurried down the trails (20 times faster than us, and that too either barefoot or in flip-flops). Fascinated with our weird English and awkward Luo accent, we conversed with the children using our Luo guide, exhausting every phrase we could find.  Regardless of our sporadic success with language communication, we enjoyed the company of the children and laughed a lot as we took multiple photos and videos, capturing the beauty of the sunset in Kenya and the little children in the field. Soon after dusk, we returned home feeling energized after chieng podho only to dump buckets of water on Heather (a traditional Kenyan celebration) for her birthday, creating the perfect end to another fantastic day in Kenya.   

Day 5: Dala Ka Liet Ngeny

It’s Hot in Here

Julia here, and let me tell you today was pretty exhausting. After a nice early breakfast we headed out to Miranga to meet with the contractor, Elvis, to discuss the work that needs to be done at the Primary and Secondary schools. Elvis arrived a few hours late (nbd though right?), and while we were waiting for him to arrive, we spent our entire morning walking around in the intense heat inspecting the systems to solidify in our minds what needed to be done at the schools. We discovered that a lot of things from the old contract were incomplete, and that there would also be many new things needed to added to the systems. We needed to fix some gutter systems and tanks. 

While we were inspecting the systems, all the children that were supposedly “in school” followed us around curious and eager to see what we were up to. They also didn’t hesitate to point and laugh hysterically when I stepped in a massive pile of cow poop. Womp, Womp, Womp! I think we all felt a little bit like celebrities with all our paparazzi children following us around and wanting to shake our hands. At one point, I had about 30 children all grabbing and shaking both my hands at once, giggling at my confusion trying to politely escape their handshaking trap. While I was trapped shaking hands with all the children, the rest of the team, still waiting for Elvis, spoke to some of the teachers and students over at the Secondary School. 

Ajay took this free time as an opportunity to visit a classroom, and proceeded to help a student with his geometry homework. He met with a teacher named Henry and decided to give an impromptu physics lesson to some of the older students in the classroom. He started off the lesson by saying “Do you see this book? It falls!” *Drops Book* “That’s gravity!”.  20 minutes later, there was a derivative on the board. Needless to say, I don’t think that lesson went very well.

While Ajay was attempting to educate the older students on physics, Tristen was able to inspire some students, Austin and George, who asked him questions on how to become engineers. After the lessons with the students, and some more analysis of the systems at the Primary School, Elvis finally arrived. Once he arrived we again walked around and explained to him what repairs and additions needed to be made to the rainwater catchment systems.  At this point, the heat was really getting to me, and I sat down in the shade with Tristen and Sri-mom while they walked around. Some of us pretended to hang from a tree and took pictures. Can you guess which one of us is really hung over? 

After things were discussed with the contractor, we sat in the principal’s office. We went over the contract with Elvis and discussed numbers and things to be done. During this meeting, the office was extremely hot and Ajay got very woozy. He had to leave and go to the shade because the heat got to him, but we were all feeling it. 20 minutes later—it was finally lunch time and we got to go back.

Because now there were more of us for lunch with Tom and Ajay, we got upgraded to each lunch in an outdoor thatched hut, which was a nice change of pace. Sri-mom and I spoke with chef Christine after lunch, and she told us how much she appreciated us coming here to help the community. We talked for a half an hour with her where she told us about the culture of respect in Kenya, her dreams of returning to culinary school, and her young son’s aspiration of becoming an electronics engineer. We plan on meeting her son, and we hope teach him more about engineering and what he should do to become an engineer.  

After lunch and speaking with Christine, I was feeling very ill with a fever, so I headed over to my room to sleep. Meanwhile, Jared was excited to help Christine with dinner. And guess what that involved….Chickens. Slaughtering chickens. As legend goes, Jared began the chickens’ death process with a butter knife. As the knife was blunt, the blood shedding process was delayed causing stress to viewers like Sri-mom and Ajay, who soon confirmed their vegetarian roots. Tristen, documenting the experience, was frozen in a state of cringing fear and stomach ailment. He too considered vegetarianism, and he dipped once the smell reached him.  Soon enough though, Jared got his meat and returned with a bloody shirt. After hearing this tale of misery for these chickens, I went back to sleep feverishly and even more vegetarian than before.

As I rested through the evening, Tom and Heather went to Kisumu for supplies, and the rest of the team went to get water samples from the schools. When the rest of the team was traveling to the Primary School, the van got stuck in a muddy ditch, and Sri-mom and body guard Jared got out of the car to push it out (which surprisingly, they did successfully considering John, our driver, and Ajay were still sitting in it). By the time the team returned with the water samples from the school catchment systems, I already reached a high fever of 101.8 and was feeling extremely ill. I know that now Ajay also seems to be feeling ill as well. Sri-mom is making sure to continue taking care of us through the night—and we hope to get better by tomorrow so that we don’t have to go to the hospital. Here’s to getting some much needed rest after an exhausting day in the equator sunshine.