Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Elephants, Kasarani, and BioSand Water Filters

Elephants:  more about the plight of elephants at Sheldrick Wildlife Trust refuge and in the wild.

Right now there are 25 baby orphan elephants, ages 6 months or so to 3+ years, at the refuge.  The pens are nearly full and many more baby elephants are expected to arrive in the coming months due primarily to poaching and drought.  The dry season has started in Kenya and little if any rain is expected through March.  Although true drought is regional, the dry season is accompanied by lack of food for elephants throughout the country.  The largest national parks, Tsavo and Tsavo East, are already experiencing drought and withered vegetation.  

The dry weather in the Tsavos affects the elephants there and it affects the orphans in Trust refuge hundreds of miles away in the outskirts Nairobi.  Normally, the three year old elephants in the refuge would already have been transferred for care and reacclimation to the semi-wild at Ithumba in Tsavo East.  But they have been held back due to lack of natural food at Ithumba.  After three orphans are transferred this week or nextby truck, their food will have to be supplied by the keepers at Ithumba, at least until the rains return in the spring.  Others will be transferred from Nairobi  only when they can be assured of plentiful natural vegetation or when no space whatsoever is available in Nairobi.  This is the truck.

 

The dry weather affects the native wild elephants as well.  When there is little or no food, they expand their foraging ranges, often to land and villages which surround the national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.  The local human residents resent this and often take their resentment out on the elephants intruding their shambas and farms.  Older elephants are snared, poisoned, speared and killed, and any young ones that escape are left on their own.  For those still nursing from their mothers, this means certain death unless they are rescued by humans.  Those young elephants not nursing become easier prey for hyenas and cats.

All of this is on top of the even larger problem of poaching adult elephants for ivory.  The price of ivory has increased nearly 100-fold in the last few years due to market demand in China and eastern Asia.  It’s hard to stop the poaching when a poacher can make more money from just one elephant than he could earn in a year of labor or farming.  

Kasarani:

Each time we visit Kenya, this is our seventh visit in eight years,  we begin our trip with a short stay at the Sportsview Hotel in Kasarani, a northern suburb of Nairobi.  There we meet with our friends and Kenyan CLOUT counterparts, Connie Ambasa Shisanya and Chris Shsanaya, to discuss the past and plan for the future.  When we first came to Kenya some eight years ago, the short trip from the Nairobi airport to Kasarani on rutted roads could take nearly two hours.   Now, thanks to Chinese road builders, the trip is only about 45 minutes long.  Roads all over Kenya have shown dramatic improvement in these years.  Our annual bus ride from Nairobi to Kasavai in western Kenya used to be a bone-jarring 12-hour ordeal.  Now, we expect only a 9-hour ride with only an occasional jolt to the back.

Our brief stay in Kasarani gives us a chance to deal with jet lag and to get reacquainted with the Kenyan culture, as well as make short trips to local attractions like the National Museum, downtown Nairobi, the Rothchild’s giraffe sanctuary, Karen Blixen’s homestead (Out of Africa), and the memorial site of the 1998 US embassy bombing.  We also enjoy short walks into the heart of Kasarani.  The streets of Kasarani are generally dirt but can also be mud.  The road to the Sportsview from the main Kasarani/Mwili road is ¼ mile of potholes.  The Sportsview is an oasis just up the road from buildings that are mostly under constant construction and sewage that runs in in ditches next to the streets.  Sounds like heaven, doesn’t it.  We actually like it.  It’s real with no pretence.

BioSand Filters:

Last night’s meeting with Connie and Chris at the Sportsview was accompanied by a meal of local (translate as tough) chicken, goat (mbuzi) meat, spinach, and rice, all washed down with generous portions of beer and/or wine.  Fine dining at its best.

Among things we discussed were ideas for what to do next to help the HIV/AIDS widows of Kasavai escape poverty and disease on their way to self-sufficiency.   Typhoid, dysentery, diarrhea, and other water-borne diseases are major health issues for the widows and their families.  We are going to try a pilot water purification project of using a “Biosand” filtration system.  For the pilot, we’ll have four biosand filters installed around the village, one in the CLOUT/Watafutaji office/sewing center/preschool and three in selected widows’ houses for use by them and their neighbors.  Each filter comes with training on its use and maintenance.  We are told that the filters can last for 30 years with virtually no maintenance if they are used properly.  Each is a concrete box about one foot square and four feet high containing gravel, sand, a metal diffuser plate, and a syphon system.  They rely on the sand and naturally occurring bacteria on it to clean the water of sediment and the majority of water-borne organisms, like e-coli.  The user pours water collected from a stream or roof in the top and collects the same amount (in a clean container) immediately from the spout on the side near the top (at a rate of about 1 liter per minute).  There are no moving parts and nothing to replace.   Each costs about $50, including installation and training.   Installation and training are planned for next week.  We’ll let you know how it works out.  And if it does, we plan on large scale installation later.