Mark Liu's blog

Sorry for any inconvenience, but for the sake of being able to post updates quickly and easily, our group has moved our blog to:
 
http://ewb-orongo.posterous.com
 
The reason for this move is because this site is painfully slow in Kisumu, Kenya and thus it would take us up to fifteen minutes to write even the most basic status update. Using this new blog, we will be able to post via email in just a few minutes!

Hey everyone. We are all back in Madison safely now! We look forward to another fun semester of work here in the states before going back to Kenya in August and continuing on what we started. We have come back with a lot of new ideas that we will be playing with, so we will keep this website updated with our progress as well as pictures of anything we build. Thanks for reading our blog this winter!
 
-Mark

Hi everyone. So our work in Orongo has wrapped up. Our slow sand filter was completed and Peter Odanga, whose house we left it at knows how to use it from here on out and is excited to spread this technology if it works well for him. He has even requested that we send him literature about slow sand filters in general!
 
Our agroforestry plot is looking extremely nice, largely in part to the significant manual labor Nick, Buana, and Zach put into it. Everyone on our team did contribute to this and at one point we had every one of us out there singing songs as we worked which was a lot of fun! We got a good taste for how difficult it is to till a plot of rock hard land using sub-par tools. Buana Sam will now be in Tanzania for a couple of weeks working on an agroforestry plot there, but he will return to Orongo after that and begin to plant some trees with the help of the primary kids.
 
Anyway, Zach, Nick, and myself are now in Nairobi and will be going on a safari and then going on a tour of an elephant nursury and a giraffe sanctuary tomorrow. Nate, Anna, and Bebe Sam are finishing up their day in Mombasa now and will be traveling by bus back to Nairobi tomorrow. We'll be meeting them here at the Wildebeest Camp for dinner at a real nice Ethiopian place we found last time we were in Kenya! Then Sunday we begin our journey home with another real long layover in London where we can once again explore.
 
Sorry for the short update, but we are quite tired right now and will be getting up in the wee hours for our first real day off!
 
-Mark

Hi everyone. We are wrapping up our last week here and are quite busy. At the moment, Anna, Nate, and I are in an internet cafe writing up a "constitution" for us to work with the Springs of Life Community Based Organization to guide our cooperation in this project in the future. This organization we are working with has been assisting us in our project so far and we had a long meeting with them last night discussing our future work together. They will be the ones maintaining and furthering our projects.
 
Our slow sand filter is just about complete. We have about 10 minutes of work left to be done on it so we'll take care of that later today! I forget what all we have updated you on so I'll start from the beginning. We first bought the sand from some boys who dug it out of a stream bed, but then found that the sand was much too dirty to clean in a reasonable manner. The owner of this new water filter then helped us to bring sand from piles along Lake Victoria which happened to be much much cleaner. After this, we constructed the whole thing in a very tmiely manner since the people here are very good at building thigns. Then about 3 or 4 of us spent about 5 hours a day for 3 or 4 days cleaning the sand using water we drew from a well using a bucket on a rope. In the future though, people can just clean the sand at the lake. The reason we didn't do that was because of the nasty parasites in the lake and all the warnings we had about them. Now all the sand is complete and the construction is complete so we have poured chlorine through the system to kill any remaining organisms and have painted the tank white to keep it cooler. Now all we need to do is flush the chlorine out by pouring a lot more water through it, and then wait two weeks for a bacteria layer to grow. So we're pretty much done! The family was very helpful and receptive to us.
 
Our agroforestry plot is also coming along nicely, but we won't have a final product to show them because we cannot plant until the rainy season. In the past week we have tilled the whole field, dug trenches for the water to flow out, begun to dig a pond to collect the water runoff, repaired the fence, and collected thorns to line the fence. Now we just need to reinforce our fence with sticks which Buana Sam and Nick are getting from the lake today, place the thorns around the plot, level out our field, make a door for our fence, and complete our pond. When I list it out like that it seems like a lot of work...
 
Today the primary schoolers are coming out to the plot to help more. Usually at least 60 of them come out every single day with thorns and hoes to help us out for about an hour. Also, today we are expecting about 20 secondary schoolers to help us out for an hour as well! So we hope to get the whole thing just about finished today and then as finished as we possibly can on Thursday. Buana Sam will be coming back to Orongo in about a week and will be staying with John for a week here so he can ensure completion of the plot for us.
 
Our irrigation team has done some nice work contacting a lot of local NGO's, surveying farmers, talking to microfinance institutions, and setting people up with the appropriate organizations. I do not have all the details at this time, but hopefully Zach or Bebe Sam will update you all about what they have done!
 
Outside of our projects, all of us are healthy and donig well. We are very busy with all these things which is a good thing for keeping us focused and working well together. No one has gotten sick and our only injuries are some blisters from manual labor in the fields.
 
To update you on our plans for the end of this trip we have decided to all take one day at the end of our trip to relax. Anna, Nate, and Bebe Sam are taking an overnight bus to Mombasa on Thursday night, spending Friday there, and then coming back to Nairobi on Saturday to prepare for our Sunday morning flight. Zach, Nick, and myself are taking a day bus back to Nairobi on Friday and then going on a half day Safari in Nairobi National Park on Saturday, after which our two smaller groups will meet up and travel back to the states!
 
I hope you are all dealing well with the blistering cold back home. See you soon!
 
-Mark

Hi everyone. We have quite a bit to update you about since last time. I don't really know where to start so I guess we'll just go through what each of the groups has done.
 
Our water and sanitation group has begun work on building our slow sand filter. We bought all of the parts in various shops around Kisumu and took them to the home of Peter Odanga who draws water from a broken borehole where they now have opened up the casing and are using buckets on ropes to get their water. The compound is home to 13 people which is exactly what we were looking for. We constructed the tank easily because they have a whole lot of experience cutting and fitting PVC, drums, etc. The difficult part was getting and washing the sand. Gathering the sand required us renting a hand cart and taking it a 15 minute walk (without the handcart - 20-25 minutes with it) to a dried up stream bed where some boys had dug out some sand. We paid them for the sand and then ran into some problems with a local who thought we were trying to steal it unfortunately. The sand we gathered yesterday was not enough so we gathered some more today from different boys and this time without incident. So now all we have to do is clean the sand. We have begun doing this and it turns out it is extremely dirty, but we are perfecting our methods and will be waking up in the wee hours tomorrow morning to get as much work done on it before the hot sun is overhead as possible!
 
Our irrigation group has had a lot of success trying to promote more modern irrigation techniques using hip and foot pumps. They have talked to organizations in Kisumu about this on multiple occasions and even held a demonstration this morning that drew 30 interested locals! I myself was not there because I was sifting sand, but I heard it was nice and a lot of people including our hosts are now very excited about the potential of these pumps.
 
Our agroforestry group is also going well. Buana Sam (Sam Dunlap - Our other sam, Sam Reuter, is now refered to either as Bebe Sam or Shirly) has helped us finish our design for our agroforestry plot at Orongo Primary/Secondary schools and has even begun to till the soil. It is quite a bit area and a lot of work needs to be done with creating the trenches, digging a pond for the run off to collect, gathering organic matter, gathering the appropriate seeds, and reinforcing a very weak fence to fend off animals. However, the head teacher at the school is putting together a club of interested individuals in grades 6-9 which will be established by tomorrow so we will have a lot of help! Already 4 of our members have really bad blisters from these handmade hoes so we are really looking forward to that!
 
Another good mark of our progress is that we officially have a committee of 10 local members of Orongo who will be overseeing each of these three projects while we are gone. John Ombwayo is naturally the head of this, and we will update you with the contacts of everyone else soon.
 
Other than our projects, things are still going well. We are eating well still and our food coordinators are Shirley and Zach so they are making sure we are eating well. Actually, yesterday Peter (the man who we are building the water filter with) was so happy with our work that he gave us a chicken! It is tied up in our yard now so I guess it'll be dinner tonight.
 
We must head back into Orongo now so we can get some work done before sundown, but we appreciate your comments and hope you are enjoying our updates! We told you we would give you our contacts last time (sorry!) so in case you are wondering, Nate's number is 254 725 529 824 and Mike's number is 254 728 408 165. My phone is already broken sadly...
 
Anyway, just wanted you all to know we are all very healthy and our work is going well. Take care back in the States!
 
-Mark

 
Hi everybody. Thanks for all your comments on our previous posts! We enjoy reading the good wishes.
 
 
 
We are now in Orongo and writing to you from an internet cafe in Kisumu. Sorry we have not had a chance to update previously as we've been quite busy! I guess that means we have a lot of things to update you on. On the second we took a nice 9 hour bus ride from Nairobi to Kisumu and got a really nice view along the way. The second half of the ride (from Nakuru to Kisumu) is typically very very bumpy and often on gravel roads, but since last August it has been much improved so we were able to relax and get some sleep. That night we met up with our real nice friend Joseph and we stayed at his place in Nyalenda. Nick, Anna, Zach, and Sam got their first taste of being a celebrity among the kiddies. Everywhere we went within Nyalenda there would be several kids running along side us holding our hands, wanting their picture taken, or just wanting to play! We have lots of fun pictures from that.
 
 
 
On the third we got ourselves situated in Orongo. It took the whole day to go shopping and get our bedding, mosquito nets, food, etc but we got all settled in and had a really nice sleep in the house of Mama Lona. We are very safe there and they made sure of it. They actually hired a Maasai warrior to guard our place at night as extra security so we really don't have to worry.
 
 
 
On the fourth, we attended Pastor John's church and then John, Stephene, and Tobias gave us a tour of Orongo for those in our group who had not seen the village before. We saw Orongo School, Nyaimbo School, Lake Victoria, and many peoples' houses, farms, and even an agroforestry plot! This was a lot of walking but we were rewarded with a really nice meal. Stephene and John helped us cook Dega which is a Kiswahili word for a type of small fish maybe an inch long and 1/8 inch tall/wide. Some of us (definitely including me!) thought it was delicious while others prefer simple beans like we had on the third.
 
 
 
Today is our first week day here so we have split up into three groups to go to several different meetings in Kisumu. One group is going to three irrigation meetings, one group is going to three agroforestry meetings, and myself, anna and stephene are running around town shopping for slow sand filter supplies. And updating this blog of course!
 
 
 
Anyway, things are very good and spirits are high. It is not nearly as hot as we were expecting, our water supply is not salty like last time, and our teams' culinary abilities are making our dinners fantastic! We will have a lot more to update you on in the next several days after we have started constructing our slow sand filter and started working on our agroforestry plot.
 
 
 
Also, speaking of the agroforestry plot, there was a failed plot already at Orongo School so we can use their already built fencing which makes our lives a lot easier. We are finalizing our design of what all we are going to plant so we hope to start digging really soon! Until then, tutaonana tena!
 

We have now arrived safely in Nairobi and will be leaving for Kisumu tomorrow. We are leaving a day earlier because our contact at ICRAF in Nairobi was not able to meet us on the 2nd. Earlier today we bought our bus tickets so we'll be heading out around 7am!
 
Our stay in London was short and very cold, but we still managed to explore quite a bit of the touristy areas! We saw Tefalger (sp?) Square, the National Art Museum, Parliament and its surrounding buildings, the river, and then Nick, Anna, and myself went up into the London Eye for an amazing view of the city.
 
While we were buying our Underground tickets in London we randomly ran into the EWB-UW Rwanda group! They had a similar layover to ours and ended up spending the day in the Natural History Museum.
 
We have met up successfully with our advisor Sam Dunlap and today we explored Nairobi with him. We got some food, went to the roof of the second tallest building in the city (3rd tallest in Africa), and explored many of the nicer parts of town. Its extremely hot here right now but it was a nice change from the extreme cold of Wisconsin and London.
 
Our next update will come after we're at our destination in Orongo!

For those of you curious, here is our scheduled travel itinerary. We will try to keep you more up to date about what we are actually doing in country, but in case you just wanted to know where we will be at any given time, here it is:
 
Dec 30th 
From: CHICAGO OHARE, IL (ORD)    Departs: 6:55pm, Tue, Dec 30
To: LONDON HEATHROW, UNITED KINGDOM (LHR) Arrives: 8:50am, Wed, Dec 31 
Flight VIRGIN ATLANTIC, VS  0040 
Mike Heiss and Sam Dunlap have different flights than the rest of us (Nick Lois, Sam Reuter, Anna Pendleton, Zach Schuster, Nate Werbeckes, and myself). We will be meeting Sam in Nairobi and we will be meeting Mike in Orongo.
 
Dec 31st
From: LONDON HEATHROW, UNITED KINGDOM (LHR) Departs: 7:25pm, Wed, Dec 31
To: NAIROBI KENYATTA, KENYA (NBO) Arrives: 7:10am, Thu, Jan 1
Flight VIRGIN ATLANTIC, VS  0671
 
Jan 1st - Jan 2nd
Explore Nairobi, take care of things such as getting cell phones, buying bus tickets, and meeting with people at ICRAF when they reopen on the second. We will be sleeping at the wildebeest camp both nights:
http://www.wildebeesttravels.com/http/accommodation/kenya/nairobi/wildebeest_camp_1.html
 
Jan 3rd
Take an Easy Coach Bus from Nairobi into Kisumu and meet our friend Joseph. We will stay at his house this night. His in country phone number is 0729 379 025. For out of country, you must use the country code 254 instead of 0.
 
Jan 4th-Jan15th
We will stay in the village of Orongo, staying at Orongo Primary school. The best way to reach us at this point is through e-mail. There are many internet cafes in Kisumu which is only 8km away. By this point we will have our own cell phones and we will be updating you all once we get those and know their numbers. To get a better idea of where we are specifically in Kenya, check out the map on the kenya page of this site!
 
Jan 16th
Take an Easy Coach Bus back to Nairobi. Stay at the Wildebeest camp. 
 
Jan 17th
Take it easy in Nairobi and finish up anything else we need to do with our contacts there.
 
Jan 18th
From: NAIROBI KENYATTA, KENYA (NBO) Departs: 9:50am, Sun, Jan 18
To: LONDON HEATHROW, UNITED KINGDOM (LHR) Arrives: 4:05pm , Sun, Jan 18
Flight VIRGIN ATLANTIC, VS  0672 
 
 
Jan 19th
From: LONDON HEATHROW, UNITED KINGDOM (LHR) Departs: 11:00am, Mon, Jan 19
To: CHICAGO OHARE, IL (ORD) Arrives: 2:05pm, Mon, Jan 19
Flight VIRGIN ATLANTIC, VS  0039