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Let’s bring Sauna into AfricaLet’s bring Sauna into Africa
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Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

Desember 2019 - Februari 2021
South Africa to Germany – at least a try. Baca selengkapnya
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4x4, Berkemah, Pertemanan, Alam, Fotografi, Penemuan jati diri, Perjalanan solo, Liburan, Gurun, Margasatwa
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  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Mount Kulal

    27 Januari 2021, Kenya ⋅ ☀️ 27 °C

    The omnipresent heat pushes me up to Gatab on Mount Kulal, an old, eroded volcano overgrown with primary forest and labelled a biosphere reserve by humans. I am curious about how this is managed and stay two nights at the guest house of the African Inland Church with a beautiful grassy lawn and in theory a view down to Loiyangalani and Lake Turkana, would there not be this very dense dust in the air. 1000 KES (7,50 EUR) conservancy fee and another 1000 for a local guide are mandatory in order to explore the forest. I could have done a fully-day’s hike up the summit but I am lazy and need also time for inner piece and nothingdoing. Half a day must be enough and so Shukri the guide picks me up in the morning. The forest is different, not as dense as expected but we manage to find huge old trees where I play Tarzan on the lianas. There are people living around the slopes of the mountain and the conservation activities try to cope with the challenge of respecting the demands of both the natives and the pristine nature. We find some grassy patches where successful re-forestation has been achieved and the new seedlings are protected against the grazing cattle which in theory is not allowed to be here. Shukri documents that with his phone and will report the violation to the community chiefs. Also logging is supposed to be controlled. We hear Baboons fighting about a fig tree. By incident I discover a super-tiny Kulal helmeted chameleon (endemic!) just next to our path on a twig where we pause for a second. Two seconds later another, slightly bigger just haft a metre away! Shukri is very excited because these are normally difficult to spot and he loves chameleons! Later he shows me also the Kulal White-eye, a tiny also endemic bird. Whatever resides up here must be endemic because migrating down from this mountain will lead to instant dustification of any bio-mass.

    Shukri tells me that he has some orphan kids around his place and is searching for patrons to sponsor their school fees. This is interesting considering the fact that one day ago I met Jane in Loiyangalani who distributes scholarships to poor kids. I connect both of them and hope for the best. Primary school – the first 8 years – is very cheap in Kenya because only books, the uniform and peanuts have to be provided. Pushing a teenager through 4 years of secondary school is more costly but still pretty not expensive for Mzungus. Shukri estimates around 60.000 KES (450 EUR) for the first year and 30.000 KES for each subsequent year. This would give a kid the opportunity to much easier find a job and be able to care for her-/himself. So, if anybody is interested in investing some of his money into such activities, I can create a direct link to these honest and reliable persons in order to offer a transparent procedure without any dubious, intermediate organisations.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Lake Baringo (without flamingo)

    30 Januari 2021, Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C

    The night I spend camping wildly on a viewpoint with panoramic view to the south-west across the whole lake. Pretty epic spot for a sundowner! I read that the Robert's Camp on the western shore - famous across overlanders - is closed temporarily due to flooding. This I want to investigate further and first of all find myself trapped between Loruk with a flooded road and a military post. In order to process south to my destination I have to take a northern detour where in turn I am held back by this military post telling me that the road northwards to Kapedo is highly dangerous. There have indeed been some shootings recently. But they are pretty stubborn to understand that I want to go south and not north and just came because of the detour. I have to fight-off an armed security patrol for these 5 km of detour. Ridiculous they are!

    Of Robert's Camp there is nothing left. Just the cottage roof tips. The water reaches up the whole access road because of this mysterious water level rising of all rift valley lakes. I get talked into a boat tour and indeed have some time left before I have to arrive in Eldoret for a new Covid test which I need for border crossing to Uganda. I negotiate a good price and it turns out that the money is well invested because the community-managed boating club makes a great impression to me. They have good equipment and professional personell. My boat guide is a smart one knowing everything about the lake, the environment, all plants, all birds, all animals. Usually this place must have been crowded with tourists! It is a very special situation being here as the only one now and experiencing the whole tragedy about the flooding. All hotels and lodges are completely sunken! The water rose by 14 m and went down again a few. The lake's shore moved in parts around 600 m further inland. Not only tourism died in an instant, people also had to move their homes. The hippos have a hard time because their grazing lawns disappeared and they have to stay closer to the humans now. Friendly crocodiles are floating like logs near the shore and it must be a bird watcher's paradise here! My favourite is the Northern Carmine Bee-eater which usually is just a migration guest and should have left by December but recently his schedule changed they say. Bee-eaters in general just look amazing in flight with their fancy wing cut but low above your head with the perpendicular sun shining through their colourful feathers this one is an extraordinary feast for the eyes. And this epic scenery of rising escarpments in the background!

    At 1200 I leave and arrive at 1500 in Eldoret to get a sample taken in a private laboratory. The hospitals don't do Covid testing for travel purposes at the moment because they are low on test kits.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Tea

    31 Januari 2021, Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    Haha! Whenever I don't plan anything the best things happen. Should I go north, west or south from Eldoret? Hmm, let's go south because there might be some tea and coffee growing. Nandi Hills looks like a very little visited region and turns out to be a tea growing centre even though the main region is supposed to be around Kericho. Coming from remote lake Turkana on this elevated plateau west of the rift valley the civilization shock is still frustrating me. Housing, agriculture, people wherever I look. So strange that it is basically just a day's drive away! But I enjoy the climate very much with 25-30 °C during the day and beautifully cold nights! On this Sunday it is difficult to step by at any tea plantation because yeah, it's Sunday. I stop a lot for picturing these vast, brightly green glowing slopes of low but dense tea bushes. Today the air is clear and the colours are driving me crazy (thanks to polarized sunglasses)!
    Still, I manage to find a shift manager at a tea estate who explains the basic process and answers my maaany questions. They used to be FairTrade-certified - the logo on their road signs lured me here - but not anymore due to some "issues". They all here produce classic broken black tea and I learn that around 98 % of it is exported to UK and India even though the Kenyans are good tea drinkers. Here you find the Kenyan "Chai" in every corner throughout all tribes which is a rich infusion of this very black tea in 50/50 of milk and water with a lot of sugar and chai massala - a herb mix of mostly ginger and sometimes cloves and cardamom. Delicious and cheap, perfect for each short road stop. The Samburu say that they drink two cups of that in the morning and don't require anything else during the whole day. Why they export to India nobody knows because if not the Indians, who else is more famous for black tea? There are many estates which provide their workers with sweet tiny houses and also schools! The companies invest in the villages and also supply neighbouring communities with schooling even though they might not be directly connect to the estate. I still did not figure out if these estate are private or governmental because it makes the impression of being the latter. No private company would voluntarily invest in the society, that's not how capitalism works ;-) The estates harvest also their own firewood from dedicated forest patches of eucalyptus, pine and ceder (?) for the drying process of the tea leaves. There are some tea patches which are plucked by hand and others by machines. But at this estate 70 % of the processed tea leaves comes from neighbouring private farmers. I see green tea bushes and also bushes of a violet variety which I find pretty fascinating. Again, I learn a lot but let this just be the beginning of this very afternoon ...    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Coffee

    31 Januari 2021, Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    In search of new coffee beans I find the Kabunyeria Farmers Cooperative Coffee Society on Google, also being located in the Nandi Hills just on the opposite slopes of the tea and being my initial reason for coming here from Eldoret. They have a clean and slim website with WhatsApp contact. On this Sunday’s late afternoon they are still happy to receive me after writing with Timothy, the CEO. Wahoo! I get a warm welcome from him, the 1st chairman, the treasurer and some other members who are involved in training of the participating 1800-2000 farmers. I am the first visiting tourist ever since and they seem to be very pleased to have me here! They give me a brief tour around the cooperative’s premises, showing the sorting station, the de-pulping machine, the washing basins and the nursery. The land with the installations was inherited by the community from Germans some 50 years ago.

    As always I ask many questions. It is their 3rd berry processing machine which removes the pulp and most of the mucilage mechanically with brushes. The beans then go into the washing basins for just one day in order to make sure that everything is removed. In earlier times they had no mechanical mucilage removal and the beans had to be bathed and partly fermented in water for a longer time in order to separate the mucilage. Afterwards the beans are traditionally sun-dried. The pulp and all residuals are composed and turned into manure to be reused in coffee farming. They are FairTrade-certified and now encourage all their farmers to move into organic farming. The cooperative’s ambition is to become Kenya’s leading organic coffee society :D Unfortunately they do not have any roasted coffee beans for
    me but solely green ones :’-( Here in Kenya generally nobody drinks coffee but just chai and in restaurants you get served poor instant coffee. At the moment the cooperative is producing around 8 full-size containers of coffee per year which is 330 sacks per container with 50 kg each but they thrive to increase their output. They sell most of it through the coffee auctions in Nairobi but are also involved in direct trade. Additionally, they run a small dairy with milk cooling facilities in order to encourage farmers to bring their milk which is then sold into the lowlands. Slightly regulated husbandry will generate additional income and the animals' droppings can be used as manure for ... coffee plants :-)

    As the evening approaches I am allowed to spend the night here on their premises being parked just next to the coffee store and enjoying natural forest sounds. On the next morning I get the opportunity to participate in the second day of a seminar on organic farming which is held by the Coffee Research Institute of Kenya. Yeehaaaw!! The people are so very friendly and welcoming, I am deeply touched. The seminar’s participants are half girls and half guys and I am delighted to see many people in my age and even younger. They are all farmers from the surrounding hills. The teacher switches from Kiswahili to English just because of me, hahaha. We learn about many different aspects of coffee planting: the correct land clearing, the soil treatment, hole preparation, planting distance characteristics for each chosen coffee variety (e.g. Ruiru 11, Batian), about the right planting season and the consequences of missing it. Highly interesting and much more sophisticated than I imagined! We also talk about how to prevent contamination from neighbouring farmers in regard of organic principles by installing plant barriers (Tithonia, Grivelia) and digging trenches. I ask a few challenging questions in order to make sure that I have the same understanding of “organic farming” as they. I report my experiences from visiting an organic coffee farm in Salento, Colombia, which leads to a discussion on inter-crops like banana, beans and other leguminous plants. Unfortunately they don't grow cocoa here. The teacher gives examples of organic manure, that it could come from composted tissue or from free-grazing animals. Manure from 0-grazing/commercially grown animals is completely banned by their organic principles because it will most probably be contaminated with evil chemicals which we do not want in our precious coffee beans. "Are we together?" After chai break practices on canopy management are taught outside and at around 1400 we have lunch. Tomorrow they will go into the fields for a hands-on session but I leave now at around 1600 because tomorrow (on 2nd) I will have to cross the border to Uganda in order to avoid problems with my car papers. Of all this I did not plan much and things just happened. They told me that now I have a second home here and I should bring my family and friends. How beautiful and delightful!    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Kakamega

    2 Februari 2021, Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

    Did some 2-hours-drive towards Uganda yesterday which will reduce stress today. I wanted to stay at a campsite in Kakamega forest but it was closed so I just parked my car on a flat grassy lawn next to a lodge, on the private grounds of an old lady. In the morning I give here some shillings for that and I buy 2 eggs from her. I think this is a fair deal :-) There are even toilets nearby from an old abandoned church. Opposite of my camp a narrow corridor of tea plants blends over into the pristine forest. I see monkeys in the distance and many birds, working hard on the ambient sound atmosphere. Hillery, a local dude usually working in Mombasa in a hotel, is here at his parents' place because due to the current situation there is no work in Mombasa. He invites me to his place in the morning and from him I also learn that a worker on these governmental tea fields earns around 200 KES (1.5 EUR) per day whereas people illegally harvesting dead wood (for charcoal) in the forest reserve manage to earn 700-1000 KES per day. There is of course some monitoring but due to high corruption nothing takes effect. A police officer or ranger earns just 30,000 KES (230 EUR) per month and everybody searches for secondary and tertiary income sources ;-)Baca selengkapnya

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  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Crossing to Uganda

    2 Februari 2021, Uganda ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C

    Before busy Malaba border post I have to pass a truck queue of 20+ km and struggle a lot with the insurance cartel. They all want to sell insurance for a whole year but I just need something for 2 or 4 weeks. Shortly after the border a police officer insists in seeing my Covid certificate but I refuse to search for my well-stored documents and annoyingly tell him that this is ridiculous because without any I apparently would not have been able to cross the border, right? He then wants an explanation on all things in my car which I also boycott and tell him that my car has already been checked by customs and police at the border ten minutes ago and ask him about his purpose of being here at all. He does not want to let me continue unless I "pay him a tea" for 10,000 UGX (2.20 EUR). Instead I hand him an old, brown banana symbolizing politely "go to hell". This he refuses and quickly waves me through. Fighting off corrupt police officers with bananas has always worked until now! I think they find it uncomfortable to be degraded to primates in public.

    In Tororo I buy a SIM card. Due to elections two weeks ago social media services like WhatsApp and Facebook are still disabled by the government. I never understood why they are doing this because Signal messenger and others still work :p

    There is no real campsite around but I find a calm hotel where I can camp in the yard. So far the people are very different than on the other side of the border. Busier, more of them, better/more elegant clothing, louder music, better music, more motorbikes, better motorbikes. And they are not taking any notice of me at all. Neither begging nor greeting. Fascinating contrast! Plastic bags are not banned like in Kenya and Tanzania. They wrap everything in thin, transparent plastic sachets. There are plastic bags flying around everywhere. If not a plastic bag then a torn condom pack.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa

    Coffee, now roasted!

    3 Februari 2021, Uganda ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    In search for caffeine I climb up the western slopes of Mount Elgon to Sipi Falls. It is hot and since two days ago coming from western Kenya there is no view anymore. Agricultural planting season has begun and the farmers are burning all their land. The air is just thick, grey fog. The area is densely populated here and I somehow loose interest in further exploration. But coffee I must find! I search for Thomas who is offering plantation tours and there are rumors that coffee is also available for actual drinking instead of just for bewildering. But his phone seems to be off. The other way round, Thomas finds me at my lunch table and then everything develops quickly. He gives me a brief tour of his veeery small but organic plantation. There are other neighbours and friends doing the same business. Afterwards, at a different place I put hands on preparing my own (his) green beans and pan-roasting them over open fire. I create my own medium-roast which I then grind in a mortal the traditional way before it is infused in a pot. What a great smell, yum yum! In theory, after roasting the coffee beans would have to rest for a few days and I am impressed of how tasty these directly processed beans are! Very sweet and fruity with a hint of Quitte. No bitterness. The aroma develops further when the cup cools down. Now we are talking business! I buy the only three packs left of his already roasted beans and consider my mission as accomplished! Had I known that the actual roasting is so straight-forward and that it leads to more than just acceptable results in terms of "camping coffee", I would have grabbed the green beans in Kenya's Nandi Hills. With two (!) hand-grinders and Oli's AeroPress my car is well-equipped for getting them into a cup ;-)

    Thomas offers me to camp at his place because he wanted to advertise his backyard campsite anyway. Wonderful! He is very eager to improve the business and to build everything up step by step. I am the first camper on his lawn! There is a simple drop toilet where I even find a pretty Black Widdow spider waiting for me.
    Further, a wooden enclosure for washing yourself from a bucket of warm or cold water. We spend the rest of the evening and morning talking about possible improvements and I give him many valuable insights from a camper's perspective. We share the same attitude in many aspects. He grows lemongrass and rosemary, lemons, oranges and mangoes for his guests. In the evening we find three chameleons in his garden! I should change my title to "Chameleonist" ...

    Uganda's major elections have been two weeks ago but this very evening in Sipi some regional elections were decided for the community's preferred candidate. Right timing to be here! Apparently there are some "rich guys" around who call themselves "leaders" and who wanted to buy parts of the community's precious land and to build more rich-guys houses there. But the community managed to fight them off by letting their oppositionist win. All people are going crazy now and dancing on the streets while waving random green plants around and shouting "We don't want your money!" in their local language. Thomas is very happy and explains all the details of what was/is going on here.

    What a day. The next morning I drive with Thomas to Kapchorwa where he buys a brand-new Nokia 105 dual-SIM handset from part of my payment (for 16 EUR). That's the best feedback from your touristic investment you could get, right?! Now he is reachable by phone again and can communicate with future guests. I try to send him a second-hand smartphone from Germany.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa
    2

    Sunrise over burned land

    5 Februari 2021, Uganda ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    My flight back home is on February 17th from Dar-es-Salaam and I have to speed up a bit. I have to skip remote, northern Uganda and will go directly to the west where new mountains are waiting to be discovered and the Nile flows from Lake Victoria into Lake Albert. I cross the totally deserted Pian-Upe Wildlife Reserve towards Kamalinga Hills. Yet another cattle-keeping and agriculturally active tribe is awaiting me here. They wear robes similar to the Maasai but also "modern", funny hats and look very serious with that outfit. I sleep next to the road and as always nobody cares. Just two motorbikes pass by and greet me. I like remote Africa.Baca selengkapnya

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  • Let’s bring Sauna into Africa
    1

    Down to the waterline

    6 Februari 2021, Uganda ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    Bsss! I want to move south through Murchison Falls National park but the ferry crossing the Victoria Nile is not operating since July 2020 due to … flooding. Again! Lake Victoria and Lake Albert have higher water levels than usual. I decide to enter the burning park anyway and spend around 270 km on self-driving safari within 1.3 days. The Murchison Falls themselves are not accessible from the north but from the south only. The northern path is so overgrown that I rip off my right mudguards with protruding, low bush branches and have to reverse 1.5 km before the falls. Again a poor view because the guys are also burning parts of this national park. But there are tons of Uganda kobs, bushbucks, waterbucks, Jackson’s hartebeests, Rothschild’s giraffes and buffaloes around which are not impressed by my car at all. My extended catch list: baboon, warthog, tsetse, southern ground hornbill, hippo, vervet monkey, black/white colobus monkey, patas monkey, elephant, jackal, Rüppell’s vulture, Adim’s stork, a tree-climbing African harrier hawk and one rare, shy bongo in the morning! The second night I want to spend wild-camping at the shores of Lake Albert but my designated places are flooded and I decide to go for the ruins of an old lodge but am interrupted by a broken bridge. Luckily a safari tour vehicle comes by the same way and the driver guides me through a secret detour over freshly burned grass to the far too expensive Pakuba lodge. They want 120 USD for a room, camping not allowed. Up your asses. It is dark already and as I am about to leave for the nearby ruins one of the staff approaches me and offers an unofficial campsite in front of the rangers’ headquarters. Splendid! I learn that they are burning parts of the park for various reasons. First of all the antelopes prefer low grass for safety and would move out of the unfenced park towards human areas because the humans are keeping the grass low through burning. Also they prefer freshly growing grass after burning over the older dry one. But the bordering humans would simply eat them. Allegedly the burning also controls the ticks and tsetse which I consider a poor argument. The last argument probably is the most important: Animals are better seen by tourists in low grass. In the end a national park is just another form of governmental and private income source. No animals, no tourists, less money.

    At midnight we hear nearby lions roaring and in the early morning, shortly before sunrise, I naively point my low-glooming headlamp around while brushing my teeth and suddenly see a pair of yellow eyes staring at me without being able to make out a silhouette of the starer. I switch the lamp to full power and see a huge lioness standing on the small access road just around 30 m away from my car. The next moment she disappears. Or was it a leopardess? But I didn’t see any pattern on the fur and this thing was huuuge! At sunrise I leave some Trinkgeld for the rangers and continue my safari after a great shower! All antelopes and buffaloes are migrating to the lake shore for a morning drink. I again meet a tour vehicle from this noble lodge. The same driver! He tells me that they saw two lions far away in the grassy valley and points me in the right direction. These guys are amazing! No human on earth can see anything in this grass on this distance and even with binoculars these two lions resemble more what I would nowadays call “pixel noise”. The good thing is that they are moving in direction of a branching track. So, I just drive around the corner with my car where I think they are heading, stop next to a tree, climb on my roof, sit down and wait. They are approaching some gazelles against the wind and are coming nearer but stop at some point. Very funny to watch that the gazelles are aware of the lions veeeery early but do not move at all. They let the lions approach to something like 50 m before galloping away. But maybe the cats are not hungry? Who knows ...    Baca selengkapnya

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