Maddogs and Englishmen

The title of this post is, in retrospect, a total misnomer because in Nguruman the extreme heat isn’t restricted to midday. Nguruman is, as promised, extremely hot. It is about 40 degrees in during the day and drops to about 25 at night. We arrived in Nguruman after a long, hot, dusty drive in our trucks and quickly set up our tents in the fading sunlight. Despite the fact that we arrived at six a night the sun was still oppressively hot. Because we’re so close to the equator, the sun rises and falls very quickly and is very intense and high in the sky all day. It sets so quickly, though, that you can literally see it setting before your eyes. There is little refuge from the heat as the greenery is extremely sparse. What greenery there is is extremely thorny. To top it all off there are scorpions here! What a lovely place, eh? It is all bad though, actually. The escarpment walls of the rift valley make for absolutely breath-taking vistas. 

Courtney enjoying a delicious, fresh passionfruit given to us at Steven's farm!

 

 

 

Bluth and Steven at his farm

 Our activities in Nguruman include writing our midterm essay, listening to lectures by Maasai elders, our prof and also David Western- the revered wildlife conservation biologist and former head of the Kenyan Wildlife Service. He was quite inspirational to listen too- a nice break from many of the lectures which can tend to be quite pessimistic and gloomy. We also visited a collection of farms near the base of the Nguruman escarpment. In stark contrast to our campsite, the farm was beautiful and lush due to an ingenious irrigation system that utilizes stream that flow from the escarpment, even during the dry season. This system supplies water to 600 farms. The farmer we met, Steven, could have been a Bruce Springsteen song. His cautious, nervous smile and honest, open way of speaking coupled with his formidable farm- a product solely of his own inexhaustible work ethic were enough to make you weep. He spoke to us in a calm yet angry voice about the injustices that food-exporting companies subject farmers like him too- including forming cartels to force the price of their produce well below the market price. He was one of the first speakers who we spoke to who didn’t mince words and spoke in a straightforward way about the problems both with the Kenyan farmers, and the foreign companies. I really appreciated this and enjoyed our visit to the farm immensely.