Hoorah!

I climbed a mountain.

Pretty much, I just wanted you to know.

For My Kenyan Readers

It's recently come to my attention that I have a Kenyan fan-base.

That's a pretty hefty exaggeration.  In fact, it just turns out that some of my colleagues googled me, leading to a discovery of Zero Degrees South, and subsequently, to several awkward face-to-face interactions designed to let me know that said discovery had been made.  For example, "Good morning, Sarah.  I know what happened last December."  It took me several rounds of, "What? What happened?" before I finally understood.

Anyway.  I've written a couple of times about how living abroad in Kenya can be surprising, funny, weird... and wonderful.  That's run-of-the-mill stuff for someone living in a cross-cultural environment and is a big part of why living overseas is appealing to me.  But, since I've spent time writing about what I find different/new/weird about Kenya, I figure, all's fair: I should share a few facts about my homeland that might surprise Mr. Kweyuh or anyone else who may have discovered this site.

1. You already know that Americans like to keep dogs as pets instead of purely for guarding the house. But, you may not have known: dogs are often allowed to sleep in the same bed as their owners.

2. In America, we like to pretend that things are more equal (and they almost certainly are) between the sexes.  Men can cook; women can drive.  Men can stay home with the kids while women go to work with no social repercussions.  But, the truth is: if left to their own devices (i.e. no mothers, girlfriends, sisters, etc.), all bachelors in both countries are still likely to cook instant noodles for every meal.

3. In the summertime, most of us take our tea ice cold with no sugar and no milk.

4. We don't have roundabouts on our roads.  As a result, we don't know how to use them and that may account for any panicking you might have seen an mzungu driver undergo while driving in Kenyan cities.

5. Most Americans don't farm.  At all.  They might have a small garden plot of tomatoes, but almost nobody grows the food they eat.  It's not even like an "I live in Nairobi but my family has 3 acres back home" things.  That's partly because, for the most part, we don't have historic homelands like Kenyans do (or, if we do, they're in Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Africa and we haven't had contact with that branch of the family in a hundred - or 2 or 3 hundred - years).

6. That brings me to another point: lots of Americans don't know what "tribe" they're a part of.  Or, they only know part of it.  I claim to be Dutch heritage but my grandparents (and great grandparents) were German, English, and French too.

7. We learn to drive when we're 15 and licensed when we're 16.  In some places kids can drive as young as 14!  So, if you're ever in the farm states in the middle of my country - watch out! :-)

8. The average age of marriage in America is 25 for women and 27 for men.  The average age of the mother at first birth is 25.6.  So, save your lectures.  I'm not as old or as weird as you think.

9. We have winter.  And it's cold.  I know you think that it's cold in the rainy season when it gets down to like 13 degrees (55 Fahrenheit), but for us, that's a beautiful day.  Where I'm from, it gets so cold that rain literally freezes when it hits the ground.  Sometimes colder.

10. We call football "soccer."  And we don't care about it.  Instead, we go crazy for American Football, which, in truth, has nothing to do with feet outside of occasional running.  It's played primarily by throwing and catching a weirdly shaped ball... with your hands.

Hope you've learned something and gotten a good laugh.  And for my American readers - well, there you have it.  We're weird/strange/different too.  Ain't it grand?

It's true.  He's been on my bed.
Photo Credit: George

Hemingway is Depressing (and Other News)

David moved away at the beginning of this summer.  He didn't exactly abandon me.  Not exactly.  He's been transferred to Tanzania - give it a few months and Zero Degrees South will be making its debut as Almost Eight Degrees South.

Anyway.  In the meantime, I've been forced to find new ways to occupy my non-work time - ways that don't include pestering him.

From this was born a rather cliche "30 Before 30" list (I've got a little more than 2 years before I hit the big 3-0).  I googled it.  I google just about everything that pops in my mind - and that's how I know for sure it's cliche.  There are a ton of these.  From what I can tell, peoples' lists range from the utterly self-indulgent (get glamour shots!), to travel-based (Paris est tres chic!), to self-improvement (learn to forgive!), to education (speak French!).  So, I made my list accordingly, although hopefully my goals are slightly less saccharine than the average.  I'm not going to share my list, because if I'm anything like the rest of the 30 Before 30 blogosphere, that would mean you'd have to read a few "Dear Diary" moments and then, let's face it, you wouldn't be back... even if this became 89 Degrees South (although that would be foolish, because who wouldn't want to read about someone living there?!)

That's how I discovered that Hemingway is depressing.  I googled him.  (Googling isn't on the list... reading is.)  He committed suicide in my neighbor's hometown.  Consequently, she attended Hemingway Elementary.  I feel like I keep leading you astray - Hemingway's life was depressing, but again, I'm referring to his books.

I'll give you the other news in headlines (extended headlines because concision is not my strong suit...)

• It's now been a year since we discovered that Pickles is kind of a racist.  He can now sit, shake, lay-down, roll-over, and fetch.  He cannot, however, keep from terrorizing compound visitors.

• I am now facing cockroaches as my arch-kitchen-nemesis -- humane captures are no longer a priority.

• My new roommate (following David's abandonment) and I went sailing on hippo-infested waters but were thankfully spared any sightings.  We made the mistake of asking the "boat boy" if anyone had ever been killed.  "Many."  We were already on the water, so there wasn't anything for me to do at that point but continue to bail.  (I did willingly embark on a semi-sinking boat, so you are still right to question my judgment in general.)

• I spotted a semi-aquatic ungulate in a swamp.  It mainly looked like an antelope.  And the swamp like a wetland.  So it wasn't quite as nightmare-inducing as you might think.

• I flew in a 12-seater plane.  I sat right behind the pilot.  So close I could have touched him.  Don't worry... I didn't.  But I could have.

And that's the news that's fit to print.

I checked for leopards first.

On Safari!

So, my parents came to Kenya.  The last time they left the United States, I was 11-years-old, making it more than a decade-and-a-half since they'd experienced any foreign nation.  Back in 1996, they had taken my brother and me to Switzerland.  I'm not saying Swiss culture isn't really interesting, unique, or different.  But, I am saying that it's clean.  And cleanliness counts.

I intended on easing my parents into Kenya in a variety of ways: we were going to start off staying in one of these fancy tented camps and going on safari.  I was going to pick them up at the airport and drive the whole way so everything would be comfortable and affordable.  I bought bottles of water and snacks for what I believed would be a 4- (max 5-) hour drive from Nairobi to the Maasai Mara.  I was all set.

Or so I thought.

...

You saw that coming, didn't you?  I recognize that set-up was not especially clever writing, so I'm going to go ahead and abandon it right here.

The trip was great.  We did have some bumps (literally) along the road to the Mara, but we made it.  We saw just about everything you hope to see on safari (with the exception of leopards, but it's cool... I'm not bitter.)  and we got to stay in a "tent" that was actually a luxury hotel with a private deck to watch the baboons and Vervet monkeys playing along the banks of the Talek River.  It wasn't even that hot.  We did get awfully dusty, but I think we'd be disappointed if we hadn't.  After all, how can you make sense of the hair washing scene in "Out of Africa" if going on safari turns out to be a tidy, dirt-free experience?

Anyhoo.  I kept my eye out for 'funny' incidents to blog about with my parents here.  I was on the look out for cultural faux pas, for food failures, for anything that might make a good story later.  My mom did, at one point, say "Jamba Mary!" instead of "Jambo Mary!" (Hello, Mary!) but, honestly, Mary probably didn't even notice.  For those of you who don't know (and for any Jamba Juice fanatics), "jamba" means "fart."  So, that's kind of a weird thing to want in a beverage.

Otherwise, things went on well.  We boated on Lake Victoria, drank tea on a plantation in Kericho, fed giraffes, and watched farmer recruitment (I had to take them to at least one work function).  It was fantastic.

My parents are stopping over in Switzerland now on their way home, probably brushing some red dust off of their suitcases onto the shining streets of Zurich... probably to the horror of their European brethren.

And I'm back at work.  So, there you have it.

For some reason, it makes me really happy that this was erected by the Lion's Club.

Fertilizer, Seed, and Warehousing - Oh My!

Lately, I've been using a lot of sports metaphors when talking about my work -- particularly in regard to my level of preparation/ability.

As a member of "Team Sensible," the non-running club of my organization, sports metaphors are probably the least appropriate for me.  Team Sensible was founded during the fall when a co-worker and I realized that every house on our compound had a half-marathoner or marathoner residing within.  We also heard that, in our sister operations in Rwanda, the entire expatriate team ran at least a half-marathon in honor of the country director's birthday.  Some of them even joined him for his full quest - 33 miles for his 33rd birthday.  Around these anecdotes, you won't hear me using sports metaphors - none of that "no pain, no gain" crap either.  For this kind of thing, I prefer history - Pheidippides expiring before the magistrates after running the very first marathon, for example.

But anyway.  The metaphors I've been leaning heavily on are much more failure-based (or Cinderella stories?  Well, hopefully...)

Punching above my weight.
Batting out of my league.
Swimming out of my depth.

When I started working here, we were serving somewhere on the order of 24,000 farmers in Kenya as we wrapped up the 2011 season.  Turns out, a lot can happen in a year, cause we're now looking at a number between 110,000 and 140,000 farmers for 2013.  That doesn't equate exactly 1 to 1 in terms of how many acres our farmers plant -- our average in Western Kenya is close-ish to 0.8 acres per member, but that number is climbing.

All this to say: I never really expected to have the opportunity to engage the seed sector, the fertilizer industry, or import companies.  Just to give you a rough estimate of what I'm talking about, let's take a look at some of these (crazy!) numbers:

Our moderate estimate for 2013 has us requiring about eleven-and-a-half thousand metric tons of fertilizer (50.6 million pounds).  If you break that out into delivery trucks (at an average of 10-tons per truck), you get about 96 trucks every day for 12 days (2 Kenyan work-weeks).  In case you're not feeling nervous yet, remember that everything is hand-loaded onto those trucks by casual laborers.  Here's one young bwana (man) carrying planting fertilizer onto a truck at our main warehouse for the 2012 season.

That's 75kgs (165lbs).  And he's going to do this for several hours.  Whoa.

Good that I got that degree in Russian politics.  Applicable, huh?

I'd Really Prefer Squirrels.

As far as I can tell, there are no squirrels in Kenya.  I've never seen one here.  And that's kind of a shame, because how cute are squirrels?  Of all the vermin out there, I'll take a squirrel.  They hang out in their trees; they scamper about; they give dogs an opportunity for some exercise.

That last point isn't such a big deal for Pickles.  He has a whole host of things to chase around the compound.  He's gotten pretty good at catching chickens, which has so far been hilarious, but (should he ever actually kill one) could end up presenting a bit of a problem.  My neighbor actually contends that chickens are the ultimate dog-toy.  They've got these delightful feathers that ruffle up when they're scared; they're pretty fast (and therefore present a decent challenge); and best of all, they squawk.  Pickles also gets into it with guinea fowl (shockingly fast), other dogs (scary cause of the whole feral/rabid thing), and my favorite: sheep.  The poor sheep are usually tethered to the ground, so if they try to run, they often end up just knocking themselves over.  I always yell at him, but that's really for the benefit of any passersby - honestly, it just cracks me up.

Pickles squaring off against a goat...

Anyway, back to squirrels.  We should have them.  I don't totally understand how some animals appear in multiple countries and on multiple continents while others don't.  I think horses were actually from the Fertile Crescent but then ended up as a staple of the Wild West, right?  And, as I recall, rats are actually Rattus Norvegicus, so we can thank Scandinavia for that little contribution.

Really, all of this is to say: how did so many mice end up in my kitchen?  Why are there mice here but no squirrels?

I've been seeing this particular mouse for a couple of weeks now.  Every few days, I'd catch him poking around the bookshelf looking generally adorable.  But, recently, he's been appearing on my kitchen counters acting far too bold for my liking.  I've got a few precious food items - Hershey's cocoa powder, tofu, taco seasoning packets - and he's been romping around them like he owns the place.  After I discovered some chewing around a Ranch Dressing packet, I finally decided he had to go.

I scared him into a tin foil tube, carried him outside, and dumped him near the fence.  Some fundis (workers) who are building a small banda (guest house) on our compound found this incident pretty funny.  I was proud.  Humane but effective.  That's me.

Ten minutes later, I was seated back at the kitchen table trying to mine some data on our farmers' repayment in Butere District and... well, you can guess it.  Where there's one mouse, there's always more.

I tried to ignore Mouse #2, but there he was on the counter.  With my beloved imported goods.  This one scampered up a curtain.  I knocked him into a pot, which I subsequently covered with a breadboard and repeated the humane release.  The fundis stopped working to giggle.

And here I am, back at the table - data set forgotten, agendas not created, work generally abandoned - waiting for Mouse #3 to show himself.  I can hear him rustling around the cabinet (re: den, rat nest, disease-ridden box) next to me, but I can't find him.  My patience is waning, my deadlines are looming, and all I can think is, "seriously, if anything happens to my tofu..."

As a side note: there's also been a toad in my shower for the past week.  What is happening in this house?




P.S. Mouse #3 was caught in an upturned cupcake tin in the midst of a work meeting.  While discussing performance management and systems design, I was also sliding the tin, one indentation at a time, over the edge of the counter.  When the mouse (as much to my surprise as his) finally fell into the waiting pot, I shrieked like a 1950s caricature of myself.  The fundis were gone, but the night guard definitely found my third humane release of the day amusing.  I returned only to catch Mouse #4 and Mouse #5 skittering around, but that will have to wait for another day.

P.S.S. Mouse #4 was caught inside a bag of chips - my confidence that he was actually in the chip bag was absolute.  My buddy Seth's, less so.  He picked up the bag, crunched a few chips at the bottom, and when the bag, well, crunched back... all doubt disappeared.

When Hippos Charge

You're a grand old flag,
You're a high-flying flag!
...haven't you ever heard of whistling in the dark?

Thanksgiving started off - awesome.  We made the drive to Lake Naivasha, where we'd rented a couple of cottages right on the hippo and flamingo infested water.  We celebrated on Friday after a full day of from-scratch cooking.  Come to think of it - that phrase should come underlined, bold, and in italics to really get my point across: FROM-SCRATCH COOKING.  The all-caps is for the extra oomph it took for Jake to get the turkey head clean off the body.

Dinner was amazing.  It was a classic feast with excellent company.  The highlight was definitely the butternut squash soup with cashew cream garnish.  (Did you know cashews could make cream?  Whoa.)

So much tastiness...

Saturday, while the rest of the crew watched a movie, David and I decided to join my boss and another girl for a hike around Crater Lake, not far from where we were staying.  The hike started around the edge of the lake in front of a pretty fancy looking hotel that had lots of diplomat cars parked outside.  About twenty meters into the hike, we noticed a hippo submerged in the shallows.

I liked when they'd twinkle their ears.

Hippos are vegetarians.  But that doesn't stop them from being the deadliest animal in Africa.  Seriously. Google it.

Long story short, their reputation for aggression toward humans became very, very real when - all of a sudden - this beast (that, by the way, can move on land at more than 30 miles per hour) charged.  Have you ever fled in panic?  Honestly, I don't think I'd ever actually had my fight or flight instinct tested before.  Once, someone tried to follow me home in New York, but I yelled at him when I saw a friendly, neighborhood police officer coming my way.  And that was the end of that story.  But this time, it was serious.  I ran.  We all did.  In panic.

A guide led us by the hippo and assured us he was the only one in the lake and that we could continue our hike without worry.  Not long after, we found ourselves trekking through an open animal sanctuary, well removed from anything remotely resembling a trail.  We came upon a herd of giraffes.

This was the highlight.  Neat-o, eh?

But then there was a-rustling.  Buffalo.  We didn't know how many and it was at that point that my hippo-induced panic, which had subsided into general anxiety, rose back into something more closely resembling terror.  That's when someone suggested we might try to make noise so as not to startle any animals into attacking.  And that we turn around.  (The last part was my own proposal.)

And out broke 'You're a Grand Old Flag,' meant to keep any wandering animals at bay.  'The home of the free and the brave' felt somewhat disingenuous to sing, but what can you do?

In the end, we survived and now have a great story of what to do... when hippos charge.  (By the way, what you do is run, preferably in a zig-zag motion because, while fast, they're not especially adept at quick turns.)